


Any Port In a Storm

by poisontaster



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Anal Sex, Ass to Mouth, Biting, Breathplay, Canon Character of Color, Canon Related, Come Marking, Comeplay, Hand Jobs, Intercrural Sex, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Marking, Oral Sex, Pack Building, Pack Politics, Rimming, Scent Marking, Sexual Inexperience
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-03
Updated: 2014-01-03
Packaged: 2018-01-07 06:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 3
Words: 88,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1116365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/poisontaster/pseuds/poisontaster
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>aka How Derek Hale, Age Twenty-Mumblety Spent His Summer Vacation. (set between S2 and S3)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. May

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to merepersiflage, who prodded this story along from beginning to end. It simply would not exist without her help and encouragement. Further thanks to girlguidejones for her sharp insight and beta skills and quietdiscerning for audiencing. All the remaining mistakes are mine; they tried to tell me.

Three weeks and the dream keeps coming back to him: 

Scott's claws pricking the back of his head and not being able to move, the diseased stench of Gerard's skin in Derek's mouth, on his lips, his tongue, and not being able to move, not wanting to bite, not wanting to give Gerard _or_ Scott the satisfaction, not wanting to sink his teeth into that hot, sick, papery skin but not being able to move…

And then doing it anyway, helpless, _seething_ , the drug-sickly crawl of Gerard's blood in his mouth, oozing down his throat and Scott holding him there, making him take it, and then letting him fall, down to the icy concrete, where finally, finally, he can spit. 

Derek comes up swinging and his eyes open to Isaac lurching back across the aisle, away from him, his wide-eyed alarm visible even in the dimness. 

Derek listens, casts his hearing outward, muscles bunched, but there's only the usual sounds: water dripping, the sigh and settle of metal and stone, the quick heartbeats and skitter of little vermin. Nothing else. It comes to him, way too slowly, that they're not under attack, that the sharp vinegary stink of Isaac's fear is because Isaac is afraid of _him_. 

Derek stills, easing his weight back—though he hasn't moved—and, after a couple seconds of staring at each other, Isaac relaxes, too. 

"You were shouting in your sleep," Isaac offers, managing to sound apologetic about it. 

Derek stares back at him, sorting through a sluggish and unsatisfying assortment of words. Isaac flits back and forth between Scott and Derek like he doesn't know who his Alpha is, like he can't make up his mind. But Derek knows Isaac is his—his responsibility, his pack—and that's enough. Isaac is here when Derek needs him and the rest of the time…

The rest of the time is a relief on both of them, Derek's sure. 

"I'm awake now," Derek says finally.

☽ ☾ 

They look at each other a while longer, Isaac's gaze asking things he won't articulate and Derek refusing to answer those unspoken questions and concerns, but eventually, Isaac's nerve breaks and he mooches back to the other—empty—end of the train car and goes back to sleep.

Scott wouldn't have backed down that easily.

Not that he's seen or spoken to Scott. 

Derek sits, until he hears Isaac's breathing change and deepen into the sighing, half-snores that mean actual sleep and not just-faking-it (a bad habit they share), before he gets up and leaves the depot, shoulders straightening and the poisonous skeins of his dreams—nightmares—falling away as he emerges into the crisp night air. 

It's almost a month later, and you'd think with Erica and Boyd missing and the Alpha pack sniffing around his territory, his dreams would have more variety, but no. It's usually just Gerard. Fucking Gerard. 

Though a part of him feels like running, Derek tucks his hands into his pockets and forces himself to walk. His mom used to make him walk; agonizingly slow rambles through the woods around the house, sometimes on into the streets of Beacon Hills, after nearly everyone was asleep. He always hated it, right up until he and Laura were fighting—after the fire, when they were always fighting—and she told him how jealous she was, that she'd always been, that he'd gotten to spend that much time with Mom, just the two of them.

Derek still remembers the sick-cold-nauseated, hair-prickling body-shiver that rolled through him when Laura screamed it at him; still feels it when he thinks of how he acted, his bitter and sulking resentment.

So he still hates walking, but he does it sometimes, now, homage, remembrance. Penance.

Derek smells Peter before he sees him, which, of course, is just how Peter likes it. The guy's never seen a shadow he didn't want to slink out of. If Peter could figure out how to fuck a shadow, he'd do it. 

"What do you want?" Derek calls, tired of the game.

Peter comes out into the light and spreads his hands. "Would you rather brood alone?"

 _Yes,_ Derek thinks, but he won't give Peter the satisfaction and he can't think of a witty comeback, so he just keeps walking and Peter falls in step with him, like he was always going to. 

"Though I do understand that all this pouting _is_ just one more complimentary benefit of the Derek Hale Experience," Peter says, blithely ignoring it when Derek growls in warning, "I do have to wonder how long you're going to nurse these hurt feelings about Scott before you just kiss and make-up."

Derek expects outrageousness from Peter, who revels in it, but it's _such_ a crazy comment and so out of left field that Derek can't fake indifference, skidding to a stop on the pavement. "I'm not even thinking about Scott right now!"

Derek hates the look Peter gives him in response, _poor, stupid Derek_ , fuck, he'd thought he was never going to have to see that expression again, when he ripped Peter's throat out. There's no justice in the universe. 

_(His mom, with his chin scissored between her fingers in that calm but attention grabbing way that she always had: "There's no justice, baby. There's just us.")_

"Look," Peter says, raising his hands again in a sham of helplessness that sets Derek's teeth on edge, "if you want to nurse your hurt feelings over what you see as Scott's betrayal…"

He knows Peter's goading him, but instinct wraps his hand around Peter's throat anyway, lifts up and slams him into the brick of the building they're standing next to.

"I understand," Peter says, undeterred, sounding calm if pinched. "You thought you'd finally won Scott over, succeeded where I failed, in getting him to join the pack…"

Suddenly disgusted—with Peter and himself, for getting drawn into it, yet again—Derek drops him and turns away. 

"I know you feel it too!" Peter calls, not following. "Beacon Hills is not nearly a big enough territory and with the Alpha Pack prowling…we're going to need Scott. We're going to need everyone!"

Derek just keeps walking. The thing is, Peter likes to hamstring his prey with truth. Distorted truth, truth through a dark mirror…but truth nonetheless. 

But at the moment, it's not a truth that Derek has to do anything about.

☽ ☾ 

"I know we haven't really been talking, but I need your help."

Scott shows up so promptly the next day that Derek would think Peter arranged it, except for the fact that Scott loathes Peter and won't be in the same room with him if he can avoid it. As it is, Derek's still not sure that Peter's not orchestrating this, somehow.

The last three weeks have obviously been a hell of a lot better for Scott than they have for Derek. He looks less tired, less stretched thin than Derek's seen him in months, even jittery, like he is now, with whatever's on his mind.

"So is that how you think this goes now?" Derek asks. In his fingertips, his mouth, it's like an ache, the call of the fattening moon like music playing in another room, siren song. "You don't want to be part of my pack, I'm not your alpha, but you want something, you need my help, and…what? I come running like your pet dog?" Now Derek lets his fangs drop, lets the boil in his stomach and chest flash red-rage in his eyes. "Wolves _aren't_ dogs, Scott. And if I'm not your alpha…you're _not_ my beta."

"I know that." Scott doesn't take up the bait, sounding calm, despite his overarching agitation. It bugs Derek, how much effort it takes to push Scott out of that maddening calm, into action, into anger. There's something distinctly not-normal about it, especially at his age. "But we don't have to be the same pack to have mutual interests."

It aches even more when Derek makes his fangs retract; the wolf doesn't want to recede. To cover it, Derek raises his eyebrows, crossing his arms over his chest. "Mutual interests?"

"Yeah," Scott says, and now there's a bit of barb in his voice, " _mutual_ interests. Like not letting the public at large know that werewolves exist, let alone that they're right here in Beacon Hills. You know, the kind of stuff you used to yell at me for _all the time._ "

Derek doesn't quite mean to, but he snorts. Weird to think he could ever look back on that time with any kind of fondness—the gnaw of Laura missing, Laura dead, still lingers, even with as little as they saw each other in that last year—but there'd been a simplicity to everything then: teach Scott, find the Alpha and kill him or her. He hadn't had to think about the future, more than half-convinced that there wasn't one. 

Derek shakes himself out of memory, fixing his scowl deeper. "What are you even talking about?"

Scott fidgets. He's got a thick rubber band around his wrist, smudged with newspaper ink and he lifts it up from his skin and lets it snap sharply back. "I thought I had control of it," Scott says, hand restlessly creeping up to cup the back of his neck and squeeze. "I _did_ have control of it," he amends. "But…" A shrug with only a slight tightness to show how much Scott's bothered, a dark whiff of worry, less astringent than Isaac's. 

Derek's heart picks up at the perfume of fear, but that instinctive thrill is secondary to Scott's words. "You're losing control of your shift?"

Great. Because Derek doesn't have enough problems. He probably shouldn't even be that surprised; most weres as young as Scott have trouble maintaining long-term control. He'd let himself get complacent because of how easily Scott seemed to find control in the first place—faster than any were Derek's ever seen, though his dad had told stories about his mom…

Derek's eyes narrow. "This is about Allison, isn't it?" 

With everything else going on, Derek hasn't been able to keep as much an eye on the Argents as he'd like to, especially since post-Gerard, they seem just as happy to leave Derek and his alone, but through the grapevine (i.e. Isaac) he knows Allison broke up with Scott and then left town for the summer. 

Scott shrugs, unhappiness printed across his face and coming off his skin in a stomach churning stew of sweet and sour conflicting emotions. "She needs some time," he says, his heartbeat a bass-line whose rhythm straddles the line between truth and a lie. "We're going to be fine, it's just, with everything that happened…"

"You mean like her mom trying to kill you?" 

Scott ignores him, though there's a flash of fiery amber when his eyes flick sideways at Derek. "She's been through a lot," Scott insists again. "She just needs time. I'm going to give her time."

Derek is completely disinterested in Scott and Allison's star-crossed lovers shtick, but—as much as Derek hates to admit it—Scott's not wrong. If Scott's losing control of his shift, Derek needs to help him. Beacon Hills is his territory. He's not willing to give it up or give it away again. Especially not because some know-nothing, bitten kid can't keep his fangs up. 

" _Allison_ is your anchor." It's completely unsurprising, but Derek can't help but shake his head anyway. "Of course she is."

"But it was working before," Scott argues. "Allison…" His face takes on the dopey, dreamy cast it gets whenever he or anyone else mentions her name and Derek wonders if he'd ever looked that freaking dumb when he…

Nope. Not going there.

"It was working," Scott says again, shrugging his shoulders, though the scent of his longing stabs at Derek, dark and spiky, like perfume caught in an old shirt. "I don't know why it's not now."

This kid. Fucking _Scott_. Derek rolls his eyes toward the ceiling and wonders whether it was all just some cosmic joke on Peter's part when he bit Scott. 

"I can help you," Derek says finally, straightening off the wall and coming to a decision. "But you won't like how." 

"I don't care how," Scott says, because he's still of an age where you say shit like that and mean it. "I don't want to hurt anyone," Scott says and that, at least, Derek believes. 

"This is why you don't make a person your anchor," Derek says. 

"What're you talking about?" Scott frowns.

Derek sighs. "You know, maybe I wouldn't have had to yell at you so much, Scott, if you ever _listened_ to what I said. What did _I_ tell you to anchor yourself on?"

"Rage," Scott says with a promptness that's kind of gratifying. "But…" Scott shakes his head, "…that's not what works for me, I can't, I don't…"

"Look, you don't want my advice, don't come asking for it." 

Scott's mouth twists. "I want your help," he insists. "I just…I don't have that kind of anger, like, like you do." Scott eyes Derek sidelong, gauging whether Derek's going to take offense, but Derek just snorts. "It doesn't work for me. When I'm angry…" Scott rakes his fingers through his hair, leaving little furrows through it and the breath of hair gel. "That's when I feel most _out_ of control." 

"It's not about control!" Derek grits, because, seriously, there are limits and it is way too close to the full moon for this. Then he pulls himself back, because he's trying to be gentler with them, really he is. "You base your stability on another person, your stability becomes _subject_ to that person," he explains, "your feelings about that person."

"Yeah, but Allison…I love her."

"Even now that you're broken up?"

"That's just temporary," Scott says quickly. The lack of hesitation gives it the heft of a line he's repeated a lot. Probably to Stillinski. "It doesn't change how I feel." 

Derek blinks and lets that one slide, because there are some things you just have to learn for yourself. There is no bypass route. Instead: "And how would you feel if Allison died? If someone killed her? _Murdered_ her?"

He's expecting it, when Scott snarls and shifts, but he lets Scott shove him back into the wall anyway. See? He can be eerily calm, too.

"Are you threatening her?"

Derek lets Scott see his eye roll, watches Scott's nostrils flare and fail to scent any threat. 

"This is my point," Derek says pointedly, looking down at Scott's claws, pricking through Derek's shirt. Scott remains shifted, but he looks sheepish, taking a step back and letting his hands fall to his sides. "And I'm just talking about her dying. What do you think happens if she's really dead?" 

Scott growls and bristles again.

"Feelings change, Scott. Whether you like it or not."

The hardening of Scott's jaw is an expression Derek knows well, but his fangs and claws shrink back, eyes darkening to human brown. "Will you help me or what?"

"You're going to have to trust me," Derek warns. 

"I do," Scott says, with that stark, simple earnestness that he's so damn good at. 

"Don't say that." The sharpness of his voice even surprises Derek. "Don't ever…not when you don't even know what you're agreeing to."

Scott shrugs. "So what am I agreeing to?"

"Sex."

Scott's mouth drops halfway open and he looks like someone punted him in the stomach and for one, glorious moment, it's totally worth it. 

"I…" Scott's mouth works soundlessly for a couple seconds before he scrapes out: "…with you?"

"You came to _me_ for help," Derek points out, putting that nth degree of distance between them by leaning his shoulders back against the wall. He spreads his hands: _you see anyone else?_

"Yeah." Scott swallows, still eyeballing Derek like he thinks Derek's going to pounce on him like the Big Bad Wolf. "But usually your help involves more broken bones and less…um."

"Sex," Derek says again, mostly just to watch Scott squirm. "Like rage, it's basic, primal."

"I don't know…" Scott rocks uncertainly on his heels like he's not sure if he wants to leave or not, but his scent has a citrus bright hint of curiosity. It's interesting, because Derek was pretty sure that at this point Scott would've decked him or just walked out in a huff.

Derek shrugs. "Your choice, Scott. It's just my hand on your dick. Doesn't mean we're dating."

"Your hand?" Scott echoes. He sounds confused and it takes Derek a moment but then it clicks.

"You thought—?"

"It doesn't matter," Scott says firmly. "And…that'll really work?"

"It should. It has before." Derek shrugs a second time. "Look, I'm not especially excited about having my hand on your junk, either, but you asked for my help. You could do what you usually do, go play with Stiles instead…"

"No!" Scott says, even more quickly than before. His nose wrinkles. "Ugh, Stiles is like my _brother_."

Interesting that his objection is that he's too close to Stiles and not that Stiles is a guy. 

Not that it really matters; like he said, it's not like they're dating. Derek sighs. _It's for the good of the pack_. "What're we doing, Scott?"

"I just need to get through the next few months," Scott says. The up-down evaluating look he gives Derek isn't unfamiliar, except that it is, from Scott. When his gaze finally locks with Derek's, he says, "This'd better work."

"Kneel," Derek says, gesturing, and he doesn't mean it as a command, but he can tell from the way Scott's back stiffens that he takes it as one and that he's going to be stubborn about it. So: "Forget it," he says instead. "Just…" He spins Scott around and pulls him back; jerks down the zipper on Scott's jeans, pushing in and taking hold of Scott's cock. It's graceless, but it gets the job done.

 _"Derek!"_ Scott squeaks and rises up on his tiptoes, but he doesn't move away and his dick hardens up satisfyingly in Derek's fingers, though Derek remembers sixteen well enough not to take too much credit. 

"Shut up, Scott," and now that Scott's not trying to get away, Derek edges closer still, resettling his grip, sliding in his other hand to cup Scott's balls, press hard into the soft, taut-drawn skin behind them. 

He tries to think about it mechanically, from a distance, _(like an Alpha)_ , but he can't quite ignore the fact that he's got his fingers wrapped around a dick that's not his own, one that pushes almost involuntarily into his touch, thick and warm and well-shaped, and that he's going to wring an orgasm out of it. 

"Oh, oh, fuck," Scott breathes, going loose and tight at the same time, his shoulders relaxing back—just a little—into Derek's. 

It's been a long time and, like the rest of his memories, Derek tries not to think about it, but scent-memory, muscle memory lingers, sneaks through the barricades in his head.

The first strokes of his fingers along Scott's length are tentative, soft, but that muscle memory—and the first, choked noise that comes from Scott's mouth, the way he pushes back into Derek's body—fists Derek's hand around him, hard and dragging, and Scott convulses, legs jittering like he doesn't know if he wants to get away or get deeper. 

As the heat of Scott's skin rises, his scent overpowers all the others, like a cocoon enclosing the two of them, blocking out the dirt and mildew and stone, the chemicals of soap and shampoo, detergent and deodorant. That particular and now familiar combination that—unlike Peter's mercurial scent—calls out as _Scott_. 

Derek snuffles up the line of Scott's neck, baby-fine hairs tickling his nose as he breathes deeply: sweat and oil and want, the iron tang of wariness and not-quite-fear. Derek drags his tongue along that same length of skin, tasting: the rough burst of salt and bitter soap, the plastic nothingness of hair gel. 

"Derek!" Scott's fangs have dropped a second time, gently mangling Derek's name; when Scott's fingers close over Derek's wrist, his talons prickle Derek's skin. "Nnngh, God, Derek…"

"Shut up," Derek says again, and the way the words move and sound show his fangs have dropped too. Derek runs his tongue across the points, adding the taste of his own blood to the taste of Scott in his mouth. He gives Scott's nuts a good squeeze and then slides his hand up, to wrap around Scott's waist and pull him back, hold him up, while Scott writhes like a fish on a line, his cock surging hard and hot through Derek's fingers.

Allison flashes through Derek's mind, like lightning, _did she do this for you_ , but he shoves it away, aside, burying it the way he always does, in the physical, letting his teeth just indent Scott's skin, there where the shoulder and the neck come together so perfectly and thickly, sweet flexing muscle. He lets himself feel the burn of tendons in his wrist and forearm as he jerks Scott off, fills his ears with each moaning huff of Scott's breath.

Driving Scott up to that edge and then over it, it's like hunting, making Scott's body go where he wants. When Scott comes, desperate, violent spurts that wring through his entire frame, it all bursts over Derek, too: the moon and victory and release. He throws back his head and howls, signal and outburst together, and for a moment, Scott echoes him and then later, further, Peter and then Isaac.

☽ ☾ 

"Do you want…?"

"No." Because of Scott's refusal to kneel, they kind of went from standing up to sliding down to the floor without a lot of in between. Derek, at least, managed to put his back to the train car; Scott is stretched out full-length on the concrete and doesn't seem inclined to move. 

Then, when the silence between them becomes a kind of vacuum and Derek realizes he was maybe too harsh, too emphatic in his refusal: "No, it's fine." Even more belatedly and grudgingly: "Thanks."

Scott tilts his head back so he can look at Derek. "I would, if you want me to," he says. "I mean…it seems only fair." 

Against his will, Derek smiles, because seriously, _Scott._ He's such an earnest little do-gooder.

_And someday it's probably going to get him killed._

His momentary amusement wiped by the thought, Derek rolls his head so he can look back at Scott. "Maybe you missed the part where we're not actually dating?"

"No, I know." Scott pushes up on one elbow, angling on the dusty floor so he can see Derek better. "Just…" He gestures/reaches like he's going to touch Derek's leg but stops before actually making contact. 

It isn't that Derek didn't know he was hard, exactly, so much as he's gotten into a semi-comfortable habit of not really caring whether he is or not. But Scott, of course, he cares about everything. 

"What," Derek says, pulling his legs up and looping his elbows loosely around his knees, "you trying to imply I can't take care of my own dick, Scott?"

"No!" Scott sounds stricken, but after Derek raises an eyebrow at him, he seems to get Derek's joking and his face and shoulders relax, his scent less peppery beneath the overriding stench of come. He goes back to his prone position on the concrete, staring up toward the ceiling and the silence that falls this time is peaceful, rather than waiting. 

So peaceful, in fact, that Derek's starting to doze just a little when Scott says, quieter than before: "It's just I would, if you wanted." His hair scratches against the floor as he tilts his head back again. "To be fair." 

"Got it, Scott." Derek lifts his hand, waving the thought off, and lets it fall again. "I'm fine. Don't worry about it."

"Oh. Okay." Though he tries to cover it, Derek can hear the relief in Scott's tone. 

Derek imagines what Scott would've done if Derek had said yes. Follow through, of course, because he's Scott and he's grimly determined in issues of fairness, but what an awkward, weird sex act that would be. Derek's done dumber things with his dick, but not lately. Even so, he's a little surprised at the hot prickle that ignites in the pit of his belly when he imagines a hand—Scott's hand—wrapped around his cock. 

Man, it has been too long. 

"So—" Even softly spoken, Scott's voice is a shock, jarring Derek out of his unexpected and disturbing pornographic detour. "When you said that this has worked before…" 

He pauses, for long enough that Derek starts to think Scott's expecting _him_ to fill in the rest of the question and, frankly, Derek has no idea where he's going with that. Then: "Did you do this with Boyd and Isaac and Erica?"

"Actually, I used chains."

Taken kind of off-guard by the direction Scott took the question—and slightly horrified by the idea—Derek means it just factually, but Scott gives off surprise like a puff of citrus oil when you dig your fingernail into the rind and, after another long pause, he starts laughing. 

After a moment to think about it, Derek starts, too. It escalates fast, from grudging snorts to full out whooping, an ache in his abs. It's weird; he can't remember the last time he's laughed that hard, belly laughing. Definitely never with Scott. But it's oddly comfortable, like they've turned a corner or something. 

"I really do want us to get along," Scott says suddenly, when he's come down enough to breathe again, talk again. "I mean, I think it's important, don't you?"

Derek thinks about the Alpha pack triskele, now buried under a half-dozen coats of paint on the door of the house, remembers Isaac's doubtful look at Derek's decision not to tell Scott: _"He doesn't want to be part of the pack, he doesn't need to be involved in pack business."_

At a distance of three weeks, he's no longer as furiously certain he can keep Scott out of it, but he's not ready to talk about it yet, either. 

"Yeah, Scott. I want that, too," Derek says, flexing his toes, his calves, as they start to stiffen up. "I just think we mean different things when we say that."

"We don't have to all be part of the same pack to help each other," Scott bristles, popping up on both elbows and looking over his shoulder at Derek. 

"It amazes me that you can say something like that and mean it."

Scott sits up and spins halfway around, so they're facing. "Not _every_ freaking werewolf in the whole freaking world can be part of the Hale pack, can they? I mean, that werewolf we saw Gerard kill…"

"That was an _omega_!" 

Again? They're having this argument again? 

"And he _died_ , Scott! Gerard cut him in half, or did you forget that part? You don't want to end up like that!"

"But that's why we should work together!" Scott insists. 

Derek knows Scott is bitten, not born, but he can't imagine how Scott doesn't feel it, that pull, that need; the sensation that there's not enough air in the world or maybe too much of it, hollowing out your insides, blowing you out like an eggshell. Even when it was just him and Laura (and the shell of Peter) and he and Laura had most of the continent between them, it was _something_ , it was _pack_. 

Just thinking about it makes Derek's skin feel too small, makes him want to pulverize and rend everything around until there's nothing but wreckage and dust. 

(Again.)

"Go home, Scott," Derek says, the words coming out thick and low as he fights back the urge to shift, to destroy. "You got what you wanted."

"Yeah, but…"

_"Scott!"_

Scott doesn't like it, but the hand-job did what it was supposed to do; Scott's solid again, focused. He leaves.

Apparently the corner they've turned has just taken them around in a circle.

☽ ☾ 

"Please don't make me ever go anywhere with him again," Isaac complains, galloping down the steps like he's going to hide behind Derek. Peter, naturally, follows at a saunter.

"What did you do?"

Peter widens his eyes and opens his mouth to declare his innocence but Isaac interrupts before Peter gets out a word, looking around with furrowed brows and flaring nostrils: "Was Scott here?" Not waiting for an answer, Isaac follows the scent, eyes unfocused until he's right up in Derek's space, snuffling. "Why do you smell like Scott?"

Derek glares. 

"Why do you smell like…oh." Isaac recoils, Derek growls, and Isaac finally seems to realize that he's practically on top of Derek, backpedaling hastily. "I don't…" He glances at Peter and says, in a completely unconvincing voice, "I don't know what that is."

"I don't believe that for one minute," Peter chides, "I don't even live here and I know how often—"

"Scott was here," Derek says flatly, cutting off both whatever Peter was going to say and the fast, frantic look Isaac tosses at him. Isaac's still new to it all and he grew up with human notions of privacy and shame; Derek was raised in the pack. They may not talk about everything they hear, scent, but they all have the same senses.

Derek might not want to hear about it from either of them, but there are no shower facilities at the depot; he knew that Isaac and Peter would smell it on him—Scott, and Scott's come, _and_ Derek's, from the fast, angry jerk-off session after Scott had gone—and draw their own conclusions. He looks past Isaac to Peter, making his voice harder when he says, "It's not a big deal." 

Peter theatrically purses his lips and looks away, like he has no idea what Derek's talking about. Isaac nods, but he's still scenting—albeit more subtly—mouth open a little and nostrils flaring. 

Too late, Derek wonders if Isaac hanging around Scott so much is because Isaac's got a crush on Scott. Hell, Isaac can _have_ Scott if he wants him. Derek just wishes there was a way to communicate that to Isaac without having to actually _talk_ about it. 

"How'd it go?" Derek asks, pushing all that aside for more important considerations. "Did you find anything out?"

Peter shrugs. "Couldn't even find anyone to ask. The three wolves that I knew, to look for…" The skin around his eyes twitches, tightens, Peter's tell that he's more bothered than he wants to let on. Peter inhales, then goes on smoothly, "Two of them were gone. It's anyone's guess if they left on their own or were hunted out. It was clearly long enough ago that there's no way to tell. Trevor…"

Derek jerks. He'd known Trevor, too, an extremely shy omega that Derek's mom had let live right on the inside edge of the lands the Hales considered theirs. 

When he asked his mom why she permitted it, she'd only said, "Not all flowers bloom. It doesn't mean you stop planting the seeds," with an admonition that he'd understand when he was older. Derek's not sure how much older she was thinking, because even now, he's got no clue what she meant, but he still feels a brief, pinching sorrow for Trevor, who hadn't had the strength or temperament to be a threat to anyone. 

"Someone definitely killed Trevor." Derek wants to punch Peter in the face for his smooth, uncaring tone of voice, even as he gets the reason Peter uses it. "Though that, too, was long enough that I couldn't tell you who did it." 

"We didn't find any sign of Erica or Boyd," Isaac says, tugging at the cuff of the long-sleeved shirt he's wearing, even in these first flushes of oncoming summer. There's a ragged little hole worn or cut into the sleeve and Isaac slips his thumb through it so only his fingertips are visible. "And nothing about the alpha pack, either. If they're out there…"

"They're out there," Derek insists, because they can't afford for Isaac—for any of them—to get lazy, complacent. That's just what Deucalion is waiting for, probably. 

"Well, we didn't find any sign of them, either," Isaac says, still fiddling with his cuff. His tone is teenage sullen, but Derek can let that slide. 

He nudges Isaac's shoulder. "It's fine. Go get some sleep, you're tired." He is, Derek can smell it on him, oily and thick. 

Isaac shakes his head. "I'm okay," he denies, "I can…if you need me…?"

"I don't," Derek says, and he thinks he says it gently but he can tell almost right away that it wasn't gentle enough, with the wet newspaper fug of Isaac's disappointment. "Just…get some rest," Derek says, rougher now that he feels awkward. "I'll call you if I need you."

Isaac nods and moves off, disappearing into the train car. 

Derek sighs and rolls his shoulders. 

"You look plenty tired yourself," Peter observes, leaning back against the wall where the shadows are thickest and crossing his arms. "You're overextended." 

"Don't start this again." Derek rubs the bridge of his nose, where the ache is deepest, with the ball of his thumb.

"Erica and Boyd left of their own accord."

"But they're still my _responsibility_!" Derek's hands fist, talon tips biting into the skin. "While you were sitting on your ass, going crazy in the hospital, Deucalion and his alphas _destroyed_ almost every other pack in the area."

In the beginning, just after the fire, Derek had been just as glad to get out of California, away from the memories and reminders. But later, not even a lot later, he missed it. He'd argued long and furiously with Laura when he found out they were about to lose their land—the Hale land—to the county; he'd argued with her just as fiercely—so many times—about starting a new pack, so it wouldn't be just the two of them (and Peter), so the pack could live again. But Laura was the alpha; she made the decisions and Derek had no choice but to go along with them.

He'd thought he was doing things so differently.

"They'll kill Boyd and Erica _just_ because they're mine," Derek hisses, low enough that Isaac shouldn't be able to overhear, if he's still awake. 

"And what, exactly, do you think you can do about it?"

"Maybe nothing," Derek grits. "Maybe something."

Peter rolls his eyes, visible even in the gloom. "That's very philosophical of you. What about Scott?"

Derek frowns. "What about Scott?"

Peter raises his eyebrows and tilts his head in Derek's direction. "You really need me to say it? I can smell it all over you."

Derek shakes his head. "Scott isn't going to join the pack." It's much easier to say it to Peter than to hear Scott say it to him. Thwarting Peter is one of the few pure enjoyments he has left. 

Peter tches, shaking his head pityingly. "That's a very defeatist attitude. And on a day when you've put yourself so deeply into young Mister McCall's affections."

Derek sighs, rolling his eyes heavenward. He knew Peter would, of course, draw the wrong conclusions, make more of out of it than necessary, but as usual, Derek underestimated exactly how obnoxious it would be. "We're not having this conversation."

"Touchy." Peter's mouth pouts like a kiss. "Maybe it's not Scott's affections we should worry about?"

"Go away." Derek points in the direction of the exit, glad yet again that Peter has his own apartment. Away from Derek. "Now."

☽ ☾ 

"You did _WHAT?_ "

Scott sighs and hangs his head. "Please don't make me say it again."

Stiles has already made him repeat it three times, getting more hysterical each time, rather than less. 

"Okay, okay. Okay. _Okay._ " Stiles stops pacing, drops into Scott's desk chair and leans forward, hand and mouth opening like he's about to say something…before he jumps up and starts pacing again. "Okay."

"And _stop_ saying 'okay', okay?" Scott isn't even sure why he told Stiles what happened with him and Derek, except that he's got years and years of telling Stiles pretty much everything in his life, especially all things Derek-related. 

In retrospect, this was maybe something he should've kept to himself.

"Yeah." Stiles spins around and looks at Scott, knuckling his mouth like he's thinking. 

Scott's a little afraid of what Stiles might be thinking. And he's completely not sure of what _he's_ thinking. Mostly, he's not thinking. Because if he thinks, then mostly what he's thinking is stuff like: _HOLY GOD, DEREK HALE JUST HAD HIS HAND ON MY DICK!_ Which is a thought that just seems to go around in a circle and bite its own ass.

Stiles throws his arms wide and shrugs. "So….what was it like?"

"I don't know!" Scott flaps his arms in a maybe-a-little-bit-hysterical shrug of his own. "It was weird! It was really weird!"

Weird is definitely one word for it. Scott has never had a problem with any of the handful of gay kids at BHHS—well, except for that time he hit Danny in the face and that was totally about Scott being a werewolf and not at all about Danny being gay—but at the same time, he's never felt any special solidarity (yesterday's Word of the Day, meaning: union or fellowship arising from common responsibilities and interests, as between members of a group or between classes, peoples, etc.: to promote solidarity among union members.) or pull to the gay kids and when he's thought about a hand that wasn't his on his dick, he's always just assumed a girl's hand. 

"Yeah," Stiles agrees, "of course, I mean, it was _Derek_. Hale!" Stiles runs his hand over his hair, which is getting really fuzzy. "Like…how does that even happen? And, you know," Stiles gestures at his head, "the perfectly groomed facial stubble, I feel like I should've known."

Scott slants a look at Stiles. "Seriously?"

"Yeah, I know," Stiles says, bumping down next to Scott on the bed's edge, "but I'm floundering here. I mean… _Derek Hale!_ " 

"Yes, I know," Scott sighs, flopping backward on the bed. "But since it was my dick, maybe I could be the one to freak out? If it's not too much trouble?"

"Heh." Stiles grins, sheepish. Then he does a kind of swing-hop, crossing his legs under him and then letting his weight drop on the mattress, bouncing Scott a bit. "Okay, but how did that even happen?"

"I don't know!" Scott's voice goes all squeaky and he clears his throat, trying to power it back down. He sits up again. "I just wanted some help not wolfing out, and the next thing I know his hand's down my pants!"

"Whoa, whoa…" Stiles T's his hands together, _time out_. "He just… Stuck his hands down your pants?"

"No," Scott protests, because he can smell Stiles getting wound up, starting to get _angry_ and yeah, okay, Scott's wording could've used some work on that one. "Not like that. Not like you're thinking. He told me he was going to do it…"

"…and you said yes," Stiles prompts, the edge still in his voice.

"Yeah, of course." Scott nods. 

Stiles opens his mouth and Scott can practically see the words before they come out: _no, not 'of course', not with Derek,_ but instead, Stiles just lets out a hot, short sigh and says instead, "Okay, well. Not to derail the exciting talk about your dick, but what do you mean you needed help _not wolfing out_?"

Between his knees, Scott's hands tighten on each other until the bone squeaks, though the nails remain short, human. "Yeah…" 

Along with everything else, he's been trying not to think of Allison, but the longing for her spills back into him, crushing and hollow at the same time. He shrugs. "I don't know. It's like…"

"Allison?"

Scott nods, not looking at Stiles. "Yeah. I know it's just temporary, but…" He inhales. "She's not even _there_ , man. I can't smell her or hear her heartbeat or her voice or anything. She's just _gone_." 

They hadn't even waited for the end of the school year. And the house is up for sale. For _sale_. If Scott doesn't pay strictest attention, he finds himself detouring past it, even though it's nowhere near anywhere he's going, school and the hospital and Stiles'. He throws up his hands, "I mean, what the hell is there even to do in France, anyway?"

"You mean other than the metric ton of museums and history and the cooking and the wine…" Stiles trails off when Scott glares at him. "Right. Not helping again, sorry."

"I just… I miss her _so much_." 

_So much you let Derek Hale jerk you off in an abandoned train station._

Scott growls a little under his breath, grinding the heel of his hand against his forehead until colors spark behind his closed eyes. For once, Stiles doesn't say anything, patting Scott awkwardly on his shoulder. 

Finally, Scott wrestles back enough control that he can breathe again, open his eyes again, lift his head against the gravitational pull of missing Allison. "Anyway," he says, ignoring the thickness of his voice and hoping Stiles will, too, "the wolf thing. I don't know. Sometimes it's okay and I can control it, just like always, and sometimes…" 

_Sometimes I want to find out how much of Beacon Hills I can tear apart before someone stops me._

Scott can't quite bring himself to say that part. Stiles has seen Scott at almost his worst, but not his _absolute_ worst (the school) and even so, Stiles doesn't really understand how it feels, one part terrible and terrifying but also really freaking _good_ , like suddenly being all the things he's ever wanted to be, tall and big and strong and powerful, all at once. 

"So you went to Derek." Stiles is hurt; even if Scott didn't have years of reading Stiles', he can smell it, ashy and like wet newspapers. 

And, on the other side, the stiff bitterness of Derek's voice when he says: _"You could do what you usually do, go play with Stiles instead…"_

"If you wanted to jerk me off, Stiles, all you had to do was say so," Scott looks over his shoulder with a smirk, hiding the sinking suspicion that he's somehow done this all backwards. He should've told Stiles about the wolfing out and he should have kept everything about Derek and his dick to himself. 

"I… That's not what I was saying, I wouldn't even come up with…! I just meant that…" 

Scott's pretty horrible at witty comebacks so any time he's got Stiles making fish faces and stammering for something to say deserves a little pat on the back. _And_ he managed to distract Stiles from his issues with Derek, so double-win.

"I'm _not_ touching your dick," Stiles says finally, definitively. "I mean…gah!" He shudders. "You're like my brother, ew."

"That's what I said!"

"Well, yeah," Stiles says, with an implied _duh_ , looking and sounding—and smelling—more upbeat again. "Okay, but here's what I don't get. Derek's usual methodology is to, like…break something. Usually somebody's bone." Stiles grimaces, rolling his eyes. "Barring, you know, the usual bone/dick related jokes, why did Derek decide this time to, you know…" Stiles jerks off the air. "Bone?" 

" _I_ don't know." Scott shrugs. "I mean…" He laughs a little. "It definitely felt a lot better than a broken bone!"

"No, but it kinda makes sense if you think about it," Stiles lifts and then resettles himself on the bed, hands opening like he can pull the idea in with his fingers. "I mean, all the time, you hear about people talking about sex, sexual energy as, like, a source of power. There was that whole thing with Sting and his wife, and, and Blood Sugar Sex Magik…"

Scott squints. "That's a Red Hot Chili Peppers album. I don't think that was a real thing."

"Okay, but you get my point!"

"I…'m not sure that I do."

"Okay, but _power_!" Stiles makes excited jazz hands. "If sex power is a real thing, it makes sense that the energy you raise from having sex is something you can maybe use to anchor yourself and keep from wolfing out."

It sounds as likely as anything else that's happened to Scott since Peter bit him. Which is pretty much the problem. When you find yourself turned into a creature that everyone says isn't supposed to exist, where did the goalposts of possible versus impossible get moved to? 

Scott shrugs. "I don't know. I just couldn't really think about shifting with somebody's hand touching my dick."

"Yeah," Stiles shakes his head. "But it was _Derek's_ hand."

"I…it wasn't really…that bad," Scott says, fighting not to squirm as he remembers exactly how _not bad_ it was. 

"Oh, _really_?" Stiles face moves like he can't make up his mind to smile or not. "Better than Allison?"

"Different than Allison," Scott corrects, not about to tell anyone, even Stiles, that Allison's never done anything remotely like that. At least not with him.

Especially not with the easy and completely casual knowledgeableness that Derek had manhandled him. Everything he's ever done with Allison has been amazing…but Scott doesn't remember ever coming as hard as he did with Derek.

Stiles makes a face, but he doesn't press Scott for more details about it, for which Scott is seriously grateful. 

Then Stiles's scent takes on the orangey scent that means he's thinking too hard about it all. "So…did you?"

Scott shakes his head. Then, "I offered, 'cause, you know…"

"Right, yeah, can't leave a guy hanging after…" Stiles nods.

"Yeah, exactly! And, I don't know. He just didn't want me to."

Stiles rears back a little, shaking his head. "That's just not normal."

"I know, right? And it's not like…I mean, he was hard, you know?" More than that, Scott had smelled, tasted, that Derek was turned on. 

"Maybe he just didn't want _you_ touching his junk," Stiles offers, picking the worn spot on the knee of his jeans into a full-blown hole. 

"I guess," Scott says, inconclusively. That had been last Tuesday's Word of the Day.

☽ ☾ 

It's hot. It doesn't often get hot in this part of California, not really hot and not this early in the year. The house isn't built for the heat, too old for central air, too cut up to get a good cross-breeze, even with box fans working busily in all the windows.

Scott has his fan pointed square at his bed, but it's not cooling anything, it's just moving the warm air around over his skin and he can't sleep and he's rolled across every spot on his bed and there's not a hint of coolness left anywhere in the limp, tired sheets or the pillows that he's flipped so often they might as well be rotisserie. 

_"So, is this a thing now? Hooking up with Derek? Friends with benefits?"_

_"I still don't know if we_ are _friends," Scott says, pulling at the fuzzballs on his blanket._

_"Fair enough. But if he's jerking you off, you're not enemies, either."_

_Scott shakes his head. "Derek and I were never enemies. Exactly. And we're not enemies now, I just don't know what we are."_

_"Fuck buddies?" Stiles suggests, completely not helpfully._

_"No!" Scott makes a face. "I don't know what, but not that."_

At the time, he and Derek as fuck buddies was probably the most absurd thing Scott could think of. He loves Allison. And he wants peace between him and Derek…but he doesn't trust Derek, doesn't _get_ Derek. And he doesn't like guys. Not like that.

But now, in the dark and without Stiles staring at him, all that certainty is draining away, as insubstantial as the light of the fattening moon coming in the windows. He and Allison are broken up. Maybe just for a little while, but ( _the house is for sale._ ) maybe forever. And Scott didn't just let Derek jerk him off, he liked it. A lot. Which maybe doesn't mean anything for the future, it might have totally been a one-time thing. 

But what if it isn't? 

What if _Derek_ doesn't think it's just this one time? 

Would he let Derek do it again? Does Scott want him to? What if it doesn't just stop with a helping hand-job? 

The sudden hot thrill in his belly, his cock, and Scott realizes he's more than halfway to a hand-job of his own, fingers chafing idly at his shaft through the soft jersey of his boxers.

Jerking off again doesn't sound like a terrible idea but he doesn't want to do it thinking about Derek. Scott rolls to the side, fumbling in his nightstand for the familiar caress of silk. 

The scarf is one of Allison's, long, thin and black. Scott hadn't stolen it on purpose; the day had been too hot for a scarf, Allison had decided, shifting the scarf from her neck (too warm), to her wrist (too bulky and aesthetically unpleasing) to her hair (Scott doesn't even know) before she handed it off to him to hold for her, since her outfit had no pockets. 

The fact that the scarf hadn't made it back to Allison, in the break-up exchange of stuff…okay, that was on purpose, but Scott can't come up with more than a half-hearted and not-very-real twinge of guilt about it. 

It smells like her and, when Scott's feeling especially desperate, he'll close his eyes and imagine the slide of it is the feathery tickle of her hair on his skin. It's worth a little guilt. Really, it's worth a lot of guilt, even if he doesn't exactly have any. 

As he pulls his boxers down with one hand and a bit of wriggling, he flicks the scarf out of its roll with a jerk of his fingers. It's light enough that the sad breeze from the fan picks up the ends and tries to eel the silk from his grip.

It's not the end of the world, Scott knows that, but he grabs for it like it is, anyway, heart rabbiting fast against his ribs, and it's only when his fingers close that he realize his hand has shifted, tough, bony talons shredding through the delicate cloth. 

"God _dammit_!" Scott spits the word out thinly from between his teeth instead of roaring it, the way he wants to, his chest burning and too tight. Perversely, his dick surges up, harder than ever. 

Scott growls, eyes burning as he pulls the scarf carefully off his claws, holding it up and glaring balefully at the moonlight shining through the three…no, four, there's where his thumb went through…holes in the silk.

 _It doesn't matter,_ Scott tells himself, closing his eyes and bringing the scarf in to drag it over his forehead, down his cheek. _It's just a couple holes, no big deal._ Scott grabs his swelled-up dick with the ease of habit. He's just about jerked himself dry in the two and a half weeks since Allison left, and he turns his face, into the silk, with that same comfortability of routine, rooting for the sharp florals of Allison's body-wash and perfume and, mingled with it, the vanilla-honey scent of her skin. 

Except it isn't there. It hovers on the edge of Scott's awareness, like a word on the tip of his tongue, or an object just a couple inches past his furthest wingspan of stretch, but mainly what he smells in the ink-black folds is his own whiff, sweat and oil and the faint milky tang of come, though he's never— _would_ never—gotten his spunk on Allison's scarf. 

"Aw, come on," Scott moans, curling on his side. He grinds his face into the pillow, though his hand stays twisted around his dick. 

Scott knows Allison. He's seen—memorized—every inch of her, how she looks in nearly every kind of light, how she smells, the sounds and texture of her. He can track her heartbeat, her pulse, from across town.

It's not there now; there's nothing there now, when he listens for her. 

Scott turns his face deeper into the pillow, literally biting it to keep in the howl rising in his throat. 

She's gone. She _left him._

Worse, the part he hasn't even told Stiles, she might not be coming back. They'd broken up already, Scott wasn't supposed to know, wasn't supposed to be on the roof of the Argent's house, but he had been, and he'd overheard everything. 

_This is why you don't make a person your anchor,_ Derek had said. It might be the only true thing Derek's ever said to him, the proof of it a crumpled up rag in his wolfed-out hand.

Derek. 

In contrast to the scarf, Scott can still smell Derek on his skin. It's faint, faint enough that he missed it or was able to ignore it, but now he's sweating, now that his whole skin feels almost luminous with heat, the familiar/unfamiliar tangle of his scent and Derek's bleeds from his skin. 

Scott breathes out, opening his eyes and turning on his back. The moonlight seems brighter. It fills the room, coats his body in sweet, cool silver. A promise that it would feel cooler, better if he goes out, into the night, under the waxing moon. If he shifts. If he runs…

No, _no._ This is what he went to Derek _for_. 

If he can't call back his memories of Allison right now, this one, specific memory of Derek is etched in hi-def 3D, from the press of Derek against his back to the hot blurt of Derek's breath over Scott's cheek, to the rough friction the tight ring of his fingers made around Scott's cock. 

Scott tightens his grip, trying to replicate that touch, the feelings it gave him, a pleasure that made things feel simple and clear. 

He can't think about Allison anymore, can't keep chasing her ghost straight into the haunts where the monster inside him lives.

Derek knows that monster. 

Derek also really knows what to do with a guy's dick. Scott wonders if that's just applied knowledge—you have a dick, you have a reasonable idea of what a guy might like—or whether it's something Derek's done before, maybe had done to him? 

Picturing either sends a hot, unexpected jolt through Scott, arching his back and speeding the slur of his hand over his cock. 

Derek hadn't let Scott return the favor, but he'd been into it. Derek's arousal is like siracha and lime, hot and sour, something Scott could smell and taste at the same time. He wonders what it would've been like, if Derek had said yes, what he'd look like. 

What he'd feel like. 

Scott's never had another guy's dick in his hand, not since he and Stiles were, like, three and Scott doesn't think that even should count. What would it be like? What would it feel like? Would it feel like his own cock, fat and warm and smooth…

…is Derek circumcised? _Can_ Derek be circumcised?

Just yesterday, Scott would never have considered thinking about a dude's junk, especially _Derek Hale's_ as something at all hot, but at that thought, at picturing Derek's dick—with foreskin or without?—it turns _some_ crank Scott didn't know he had. He grunts, rough and surprised at the hot wringing pulse in his belly, his cock, his balls, and then he shoots, thick splatters up his belly, his chest, thick over his own hand. 

_"Jesus,"_ Scott says weakly, and throws his other arm across his eyes.


	2. June

Derek knows just enough about cars to know he doesn't have a chance in hell of figuring out what's wrong with the Camaro and he's going to have to get a mechanic to take a look at it. _Fuck._ Derek's fingers tighten around the useless wrench, hard enough that the anodized metal creaks a little.

"Did you do something to me?"

The snarling sharpness of Scott's voice makes Derek's hand crimp tight, the wrench becoming even more useless as it bows into a U. It takes more effort than Scott will ever appreciate not to whip around and grab Scott by the throat; put him down until he submits. 

Not that Scott would ever submit, short of a level of violence that even Derek's uncomfortable with and that would destroy any chance of winning Scott around. Hell, Scott didn't even submit to Peter, who made him, even when he was newly bitten and at his most vulnerable. 

Derek's never going to say it to Scott's face and it's never going to stop being annoying as hell when it's turned against Derek, but Scott's rock-hard stubbornness is probably what he admires most about the guy. He can't even really imagine what that kind of certainty would feel like from the other side, from inside. 

Of course, that's also what makes it most surprising that Scott's back. Almost a month later, sure, but back. He'd figured Scott did what he normally does and struck out on his own or, if worse had come to worst, he'd gone to Stiles, his usual partner-in-crime. Of course, if he's just here to accuse Derek of…something, then Derek guesses it makes a lot more sense. 

He sighs and backs away from the raised hood, finally looking up at Scott as he discards the ruined wrench to the driveway with a clank. "I assume you mean more than the obvious."

He doesn't expect Scott will blush. Or…maybe he does and he just wanted to see it happen, pink and hot, with a scent like Red-Hot candies taste. Derek leans his weight back against the car, metal biting into his hands. "What's this about, Scott?"

Scott's shoulders tuck in even deeper, almost a hunch, and he can't quite manage to meet Derek's eyes, which is interesting, because he's never had a problem staring Derek down before. His scent is sour, crab-apple-y with embarrassment, even more hotly cinnamon-ish with something else, something Derek can't pin down. "I just…feel different," Scott says.

"I don't know what that means." It takes them _so long_ to get to the point of anything. "Are you still having problems with your shift?"

Scott's eyebrows twist in, he looks and smells confused and Derek's patience nudges another bit toward _im_ patience, but he fights down the urge to throw up his hands and snap, "What are we even talking about, then?!" because he is, goddamn it, going to get better at this, even if it does feel like juggling ducklings, right out of the shell. He wishes he hadn't thrown the wrench down; maybe he'd feel better if he could twist it into a pretzel.

"I don't know…exactly."

Derek blows out a breath, rattling on the edge of shift himself. "Well, what _do_ you know? Exactly?"

Scott's blush deepens and his pulse and scent goes _nuts_ , an overload that makes Derek wrinkle his nose and fight a sneeze as Scott says, "I feel different about _you_."

Oh.

Derek blinks, a white-noise silence filling his head and mostly replacing the low-level but constant buzzing of the fattening moon. 

"Scott—" Derek doesn't know what he's going to say beyond that, just the numb repetition of Scott's name, but it doesn't matter, because Scott cuts in over him:

"I know, all right? I know!" Scott kicks at the ground, scattering pebbles of gravel and stars of shattered glass. Some of them ping against the Camaro's hub caps and wheels; Derek's jaw tightens until he feels it in his teeth. "It's stupid and it's creepy and it's weird and I don't even like guys, at least not like that…"

Derek lifts his hand, a kind of _hold on, give me a minute_ , but Scott either doesn't see it or doesn't care, the words stumbling and falling over each other in a way that shows Scott's spent way too many years keeping up with Stillinski.

"…but then I'm wondering about if you've got a foreskin or not…"

Whoa. _Whoa._

"…and I'm not saying you hate me or anything, but you definitely don't _like_ me very much, so there's that…"

"Scott, stop."

"…so it would just be a lot easier if it was like, a spell or something," Scott babbles on, as though he can't even stop himself from talking now that it's all spilling—vomiting—out, "or, or, because you're an Alpha, maybe and it's just something that happens with Alphas…" 

Scott makes a mournful little moaning sound, putting both hands in his hair and tugging and shaking his head, "but it's not, I know it's not and you're going to tell me it's not, that it's all me and I just…"

"Scott—"

"…I need you to not be a jerk about this, because I'm _seriously_ freaking out about it, I'm…"

_"Scott! Stop!"_

Scott skids to a crashing verbal halt, his face gone through pink and into a hectic red. He looks like he's going to shift, die or burst into tears and, really, Derek doesn't want that, none of those are good options. 

"Stop," Derek says again, quieter, wishing that just saying it could make this whole thing stop, go away. Why is it like this? Why is it that even the simplest things he tries to do go awry and strange and _wrong_? 

Scott is still looking at him, frowning, his arms hugged around himself, waiting. Waiting for Derek to say something. 

Derek sags back harder against the car until it squeaks slightly on its shocks. "I…don't. I like you fine, Scott."

Scott's laugh is jagged, telling Derek he's gotten it wrong yet again, and he backs up into and then slides down the trunk of the nearest tree, hands fisting together between his spread knees. "Well, thanks for not being a jerk, I guess."

Derek sighs and crouches down so he and Scott are on a level. "Scott." Again, once he gets past the opening gambit of Scott's name, he can't think of any actual _words_ to follow it up with, just an inarticulate snarl of things that it would be a whole hell of a lot easier if he could just beam it all into Scott's head. 

Scott stares at Derek for several seconds before his gaze swings sideways and he knuckles across his cheek, his mouth, stretching them out of shape. "Yeah…" he says, his voice as wavery as his laugh the moment before. He puts his hand in the dirt, getting ready to push himself up again, "I'm just gonna…"

"Wait." Derek drags the heel of his hand up his forehead. "Jesus, Scott, you show up here and start talking about, about…" _my foreskin_. Derek can't even make himself say the word. "Just…give me a minute, okay? Give me a minute."

"Yeah, sure," Scott mumbles, still looking away, but he plants his butt back in the dirt. 

"I was just trying to help," Derek says finally, because that, at least, feels crystal clear. "You wanted my help. I didn't do anything to you."

"Other than the obvious," Scott says with a flat little unamused smile. 

"Other than the obvious." Derek agrees, biting off each word. Then: "I didn't cast a spell on you."

"No…" Scott bonks his head back against the tree's trunk. "That was stupid. I didn't really mean that. I'm just…"

"Freaking out."

"Yeah."

Derek sighs. He does remember what it was like, that first time with a guy, the first time he realized a man could turn him on as much as a woman. To say it'd been an adjustment was an understatement.

"So how do you see this going, Scott?" he asks, letting his own butt settle on the ground. There's interested little zing in his belly at the thought of having Scott again, but he doesn't let himself think about it, dwell on it. "Because I already told you about having a person as your anchor."

"I don't want you as my anchor," Scott says quickly, fast enough to be a little insulting but not so fast Derek thinks Scott's lying—to Derek or himself. "It…it actually helped, the…" Scott's hands gesture meaninglessly. "What you did. It helped."

Derek stomps down on the vague sense of pleasure at Scott's words, same as he bit down on the desire to go all alpha on Scott. 

Scott sighs, rolling his head against the bark. "I don't know what I want."

He does, though; Derek can hear it in the subtle skip/beat of Scott's heart, the rank, oily lust fleeting off Scott's skin. "You want sex," Derek says flatly, because seriously, Scott needs to get over this human coyness, at least with other wolves.

Derek doesn't for a second consider that it has anything to do with him, personally, except as the potential partner to/dispenser of sex…but he finds himself considering it anyway. 

Scott's nostrils flare and his eyes change, the irises darkening and the pupils sweeping a little wider, but he doesn't say anything.

"If you can't say it, how the hell do you expect to have it?" Derek presses. "You're not a kid, just say it." He leans, shifts his entire weight forward, back into a crouch, fingers flexing in the dirt. It feels good, right, long muscles humming with the tension…and the possibility of release of that tension. "You want sex."

Amber swims beneath the natural brown of Scott's eyes, like light on waves, but doesn't quite surface as he meets Derek's gaze, hot and not docile in the least. "Yes," Scott says thickly and with a swallow that can be heard even without enhanced hearing. "I want sex."

☽ ☾ 

_What are you_ doing _?_ Scott's inner Stiles screams. And Scott…he doesn't know.

Derek comes closer, a hip-twisting slither that should look awkward and instead looks scarily boneless and just plain scary. His head tilts and for a moment, Scott thinks Derek is going to kiss him—and panics briefly about whether he _wants_ Derek to or not—but instead Derek pushes Scott's chin up and Scott's looking up through a lace of branches while Derek huffs hotly across Scott's throat. 

Scott knows it's just breath, knows Derek is just scenting him, but those rational thoughts don't change the way the puffing sear of each exhale _burns_ , igniting Scott's skin, coursing down his veins and waking every part of him to aching life. 

Peter did something like this to him once, Scott thinks, as his legs spread wider to accommodate his swelling boner and his fingers dig into the dead leaves and dirt. He remembers the heat and weight of the Alpha's—Peter's—body over his, pinning him. 

Except with Peter, it'd been the Alpha— _Peter_ —forcing something, forcing _himself_ into Scott and, though he can feel the power that radiates from Derek, the strength, Derek isn't doing anything like that. 

If anything, he's waiting. 

_What is he waiting for?_

"I can smell myself on you," Derek's murmurs, sniff-breathing up behind Scott's ear. His grip shifts from Scott's chin to cup the side of Scott's head, threading into Scott's hair, pulling a little to move Scott's head how he wants it.

"Derek—" Scott says unsteadily, fisting Derek's tee-shirt. The cloth is old and skin-soft, the shoulder underneath rock-hard, solid with muscle.

"Scott," Derek says back, sounding way more calm than Scott feels. Warmth swipes along Scott's neck and his cock swells harder when he realizes that Derek licked him. _Tasted_ him.

But then Derek doesn't go on from there, simply tugging Scott's head the other way to give himself access to the other side of Scott's neck, still scenting.

_What is he waiting_ for?

The answer comes without any blare of trumpets or even real surprise: _he's waiting for you, dumbass._

The thought of touching Derek, actually putting his hands on him, is scarier than Derek pushing him into saying it out loud: _I want to have sex._ Actually touching him…

Scott can do this. He absolutely, totally can.

First contact is Derek's knee. Which is fine. Totally fine. He's probably touched Derek's knee some time before, right? If not, it's still a safe place to touch, a normal place, to be touching another guy. Moving up the inseam, though…

Scott doesn't get _that_ far up the inseam before he hits what's undeniably Derek's cock, pushing out the denim. Before he can think too much—or freak out too hard—Scott cups his palm over it, feeling its resilience, the solidity of the core. It's not quite the revelation Scott thought it would be—it's a dick—but it kind of is, too: a dick that's not his own, that twitches under his touch, taut with blood. _Derek's_ dick. 

Okay, now dick doesn't even sound like a real word anymore. But Scott keeps touching Derek's, tracing the thick shape of it, moving his fingers back and forth along the shaft. 

_"Scott."_

Scott snaps back to realize how long Derek's been crouched like that, letting Scott just _pet_ his cock, same as he'd caress a cat or dog at Deaton's. He's suddenly aware of how much heat is radiating from Derek's skin, how harsh Derek's breath is, in Scott's ears, against his skin. 

"Sorry!"

Derek growls, makes a bull-like snort before dropping to his knees so he's straddling Scott instead of crouching over him. "No, I just—" Derek says, "I need more." He opens Scott's jeans just like last time, like he does it all the time, like he's done it a million times, and augh, if Scott keeps thinking like that, he's going to jizz before Derek even touches him.

Scott takes a deep breath and poises his fingers over the waistband of Derek's pants. "Do I…? Should I…?"

Derek snorts again, pushing Scott's hands aside and leaning in again to press his mouth and scratch his teeth against Scott's neck in what, if it were anyone else but Derek Hale, Scott would call kisses. "I got it, Scott."

Derek does, fishing Scott's cock from his underwear with one hand and bringing out his own— _holy crap,_ not _circumcised_ —with the other in an act of ambidextrousness that Scott's going to have to think about and marvel over at a time he's more capable of thinking of something past the fact that his dick is again in Derek's hand and then, _oh_ , his dick is rubbing against Derek's, in Derek's hand and, and, _wow_ that's really awesome.

"Yeah?" Derek is smiling against Scott's skin, which is weird ( _maybe he's just baring his teeth?_ ) and he sounds _pleased_ , which is even weirder. "You like that?"

Scott laughs. "What's not to like?"

The laugh turns to a much less identifiable noise when he feels Derek's fangs extend, needle sharp tips pricking against the skin without actually breaking it. 

Grabbing a fistful of Derek's hair is instinct. So many of his memories of Derek are wrapped up in pain, directly or indirectly: Derek breaking his hand, the brawl— _multiple_ brawls—in the burned out wreck of the Hale house behind them, the fight at the ice rink. Even the stuff that turned out to be Peter and not Derek, it's hard to separate it out, to not see Derek as the one who brought it all crashing into his life. 

But with Derek only gliding the tips of his canines across Scott's throat and shoulder, and Derek's thumb circling from the head of Scott's cock to his own and back, it's harder for Scott to remember why letting Derek bite him is a bad idea. 

"Derek—"

"It'll only hurt for a minute, Scott," Derek says promptly, like he's been waiting for Scott's half-hearted, not-exactly-an-objection. "It'll heal."

It will. Slower than a bite from another beta, but it will heal. 

"Don't." 

Even as he says it, Scott fingers tighten and he braces for the knife bite of fangs unconfident that Derek will respect "don't". But Derek only makes another slow teasing scrape of his fangs over Scott's shoulder before pulling back.

"Don't want anything that'll leave a mark," Derek says, tone and scent so flat that Scott doesn't know what to read from it. "Nothing that'll show."

Easier to grasp is when Derek shifts forward, planting one hand against the tree's bark and rocking his cock into Scott's. Scott isn't good at comebacks at the best of times and the slick friction of Derek's dick against his makes all the words fall out of his head.

Derek's heavier body pins Scott without a lot of room to move, but he finds himself trying to thrust up anyway, desperate for the rub of Derek's forefinger back and over his cock head, the push of Derek's dick against the shaft. 

Around the feeling of them moving together, the gathering tightness and electric zinging pleasure from his nuts, twines the struggle not to think of Allison, not to think of how nothing with Allison was like this. The dark stab of missing her all over again is like the bite he denied Derek, breathless pain mixed muddily, confusingly, with the want and need to come. 

Derek's head is mostly pointed down, eyes hidden behind the lowered lids, the long sharp arrow of his nose, changing shape just a little with each flare of his nostrils, half the panting and half because he's scenting, he's _smelling Scott_ , even now, and beneath, Derek's mouth, always unsmiling but now half-open and pink. 

Scott _snarls_ , fingers snapping tight in Derek's hair again and dragging Derek's face up so he can slam his mouth over Derek's, not so much a kiss as forcing those feelings—the rage and longing and howling hunger—forcing them all into Derek, making Derek take them, like a bitter pill he can share from tongue to tongue. 

There's a brittle crackle behind Scott and then a soft shower of particles over his shoulder. Scott's senses expand and he realizes Derek's claws are shredding the bark from the tree right as Derek growls into Scott's mouth, a vibration he can feel all the way down to his balls. Then Derek thrusts against Scott, hard, shuddering, and the salt-milky smell of Derek's come blooms in Scott's nose. It spatters over him wet and hot, chest and belly and one squirt all the way up to Scott's neck. 

_Derek came on me,_ Scott thinks, equal parts grossed out and freakishly turned on, and then it's on Derek's fingers and between their cocks and it's _slicker_ and warmer and better and oh, fuck, oh, God, _oh_ … 

Scott throws his free arm around Derek. It feels like the only thing he _can_ do, twisting inside out, drowning under it, and then the fall, freefall, the dropping release into nothingness where he's not thinking, he's not worrying, he's not _doing_ anything, he's just being and it's awesome, it's so freaking awesome.

☽ ☾ 

"Stiles is here," Scott's mom says unnecessarily, when Scott walks in, like he didn't see the Jeep parked on the curb, like he can't smell fresh _eau de Stiles_ in the house over all the old tracks, or hear him upstairs, a combination of rabbity pulse and Stiles' habit of randomly talking to himself when there's no other audience.

"Oh," Scott says, "Um. Sorry?"

His mom gives her customary half-hearted sigh and goes back to unsorting the now-clean laundry into his and hers by tossing them over the coffee table to either end of the couch. "Just go find out if he's planning on staying for dinner, okay?" She leans forward and squints at him. "You do know your shirt is on inside out, right? Is this some new fashion thing? Because, honey…"

"No, _Mom_." Which seems to be not good enough an answer, because she's still looking at him expectantly. "I, uh…" Scott longs to be better at making things up on the fly the same as he takes a defiant pride in the fact that he's not a better liar. "I just got something on it."

He has never been so glad that his mother is not a werewolf, with a werewolf's senses.

He washed the shirt out best he could in the river, but it still reeks of jizz and Derek and who knows what else. The shirt mostly covers the stains on his jeans, but they're a lost cause, too. 

His mom tips her chin and makes a little 'heh' noise. "Well, here, take your laundry upstairs. _And put it away_. Don't just toss it in a pile on your bed or, God forbid, back on the floor."

Scott's skin prickles as he scoops up the pile of clean laundry from the couch, half-afraid that his mom will be able to smell it on him anyway, or that she'll just _know_ , but she seems preoccupied at picking at a salsa verde stain on one of her shirts that didn't come out. Scott escapes sweaty but unscathed, holding his clean clothes as far from his unclean body as he can without dropping anything. 

"Hey, what are you doing here?" Scott works really hard at sounding normal, looking normal, as he kicks his door open and crosses to dump his clean laundry on the very small part of the bed not currently taken up by Stiles, Stiles' laptop, a Captain America comic book and a thick book of what looks like physics.

"Kicked out of my house," Stiles says. Translation: his dad's working night shift. Stiles jerks both his phone and body to the left, over the thumping drums of Temple Run 2, almost falling off the bed. No good; a tinny scream and Stiles tosses the cell aside in disgust. "I was just about to beat my best score," he complains.

"I would apologize, except it's _my_ room you're squatting in, so I guess you're just going to have to suck it up," Scott says, digging through his laundry for a clean shirt. "By the way, my mom wants to know if you're staying for dinner."

"I don't know, what's for…OH. MY. GOD, you did it again, didn't you?"

"Did what?" The words are automatic, but Scott holds his fresh shirt in front of him like a shield. He can't tell if he's blushing, but it sure feels like it. 

"Seriously?" Stiles' eyebrows stretch toward his hairline. "You think I don't know jizz stains when I see them?" His nose wrinkles. " _And_ smell them. Jeez, you smell like a gas station bathroom." He fans his hand frantically in Scott's direction.

"Shut up, I do not," Scott says, mostly on reflex and not because he really disagrees with Stiles. "Anyway, I'm about to take a shower." 

"Please do," Stiles says, nasally because he's pinched his nose shut with one hand, waving Scott toward the bathroom with the other. "And while you're doing that, I'll negotiate with your mom about dinner." 

In the bathroom, Scott strips mechanically out of his clothes and turns the shower on to full-hot. The heater is too old for the water to ever get really scalding but he feels cold, despite the unmoving air in the house and as warm as it gets will feel good on his skin. 

When he climbs in, though, he sags back against the tile, freezing cold and slick against his spine. The bike ride from Derek's hadn't been hard; Scott doesn't know why he suddenly feels so tired, why it's crashing down so hard right now, like he could sink down into the tub and just...sleep. 

He can hear his mom and Stiles downstairs. Though the actual sense of their words is washed out by the hissing rasp of the shower, the bickering, negotiating tone of it is very familiar. Scott breathes in and out for a second, like he's steeling himself for that first plunge off the high dive, then he straightens up and steps under the spray.

☽ ☾ 

"What are we doing here?" Isaac looks around the diner doubtfully yet again before going back to poking with equal doubt at his food.

"We're having dinner." Derek likes his burgers the next thing to raw, but he likes his bacon super-crisp, the next thing to burnt. He swipes his thumb through the shattered slivers that had fallen to the plate and brings it to his mouth, a salty, fatty burst across his tongue. 

"Okay, but…why?" Isaac jabs his fork in a piece of his meatloaf and holds it up, frowning. 

Derek frowns too, shoving his plate away. "Because we needed to eat."

Isaac looks up from his inspection of his meatloaf and blinks at Derek, the slow, wide-eyed blink that means he's surprised and trying to be non-threatening. "Sorry," he says, as if he's testing his way across ice. "I just… I don't know what's wrong with take-out. We usually have take-out."

It's true, they usually do. Half the numbers in Derek's phone are for restaurants around Beacon Hills. It used to be more than half, but Peter giving the bite Scott brought all these other people crashing into his life and now he has all these numbers to go with them, all these people who aren't even pack: Stillinski and the vet, the flirty redhead.

Derek shrugs, looks away, a low level simmer already starting up in the muscles of his back, his jaw. "Maybe I just wanted to do something different."

This is also true, as far as it goes. The car dealership across the street mocks him through the diner's storefront window, but the diner itself seemed like a good idea, too, _because_ they never do it, and because the husked out shell of the house, or at the depot, isn't the same as eating in the light, at a table. 

"Yeah, sure, okay," Isaac says, in a way that lets Derek know he doesn't actually understand at all. Derek wishes he knew if it was him or Isaac or both of them and what he could do to fix it. Isaac swirls his cube of meatloaf through the slurry of mashed potatoes and gravy before popping it in his mouth. "The food's not half-bad," he allows. "The mashed potatoes are real, not from a mix." Isaac shrugs, then looks up at Derek from under his lashes. "Are you going to finish your fries?"

"Kill it," Derek says and shoves the plate across the table. Hunger still gnaws dully in his stomach, but Isaac's still growing, on top of his new metabolism and the upcoming full moon. He needs it more and Derek can remember his father pushing his leftovers at Derek with those same, offhand words. 

The memory is like dry ice, hot and cold at the same time and, rather than dwell on it, Derek looks across at the dealership again, letting the floodtide of worries great and small wash in and drown it. 

"Why don't you go see what Scott's up to when we get out of here?" Derek says. He _has_ the money, it's not that he doesn't have the money, especially as low-key has he's been living. It's just that he doesn't like actually _using_ the money…

"Because you want me to keep an eye on Scott," Isaac asks slowly, in that same cautious voice, "or just because?"

Derek gives Isaac his full attention again, aware he went off the rails somewhere but not quite sure where. Mostly he was thinking about how much he didn't want to spend the money to replace the Camaro, even though technically, the money is there for that. 

"Because I have something to do," he says, "and with the…" His voice is starting to rise and sharpen. Derek throttles himself back, lowering his voice and leaning in, "With the Alpha Pack in town, I don't want you going off by yourself. If you'd rather go hang out with Peter…"

"No," Isaac says hastily, "I can go to Scott's, if you don't want me with you."

Derek sighs. "It's not a _punishment_ , Isaac. I'm trying to keep you safe."

Isaac says nothing, but his jaw juts mulishly, and he's starting to bend his fork, cheap pot-metal that it is, into a U. Still, he knows better than to try and stare Derek down—especially this close to full moon—instead stubbornly eyeballing a point in between Derek's collarbones. 

"I thought you and Scott were friends," Derek tries again. Why is this so stupidly hard?

Isaac shrugs. "We are. I guess. I don't know." Another shrug. Then Isaac brings his gaze up to look up at Derek, lucid and straight-on. "Are _you_ and Scott friends?"

It doesn't take a rocket scientist to tell what Isaac means by that. Scott's scent is still all over him and, even with his current preoccupations, he feels more relaxed than he has in weeks, if not months. But it's not what Isaac thinks it is. 

"Scott and I aren't anything," Derek says. "If you want…"

"I could go with you," Isaac offers. "Whatever it is you're doing, I could go with you. You shouldn't be alone, either." 

"I'll be fine."

Isaac huffs, a cloud of coppery annoyance exuding from his skin, but he goes back to eating his dinner, albeit with sharp, jerky motions, fork clanking against the plate in a Morse code of displeasure. 

"Is there something else I can get for you boys?" The waitress refills their water glasses without a splash hitting the table. She smells sick, sickly—diabetic, Derek thinks, he had a teacher once who was diabetic—but despite Isaac's insistence of sitting like he expects Sheriff Stilinski to burst in with a SWAT team at any second, and Derek's apparent general air of skeeviness, she's been very friendly to them both. "Refill on your Cokes, some dessert?"

Isaac perks momentarily at the prospect of dessert, then his gaze darts at Derek and he shakes his head. 

Derek sighs again, squaring his shoulders against the booth back. Then, putting on his best pretense of patience and his prettiest smile, "Dessert sounds great! What've you got?"

☽ ☾ 

He ends up taking Isaac with him to the dealership. He'd planned to take Isaac with him in the first place, but after Isaac started bitching about the diner, Derek thought he was doing Isaac a favor by giving him an out. But Isaac seems just as happy trailing behind him through the rows of cars, sniffing busily.

"I think…" Isaac leans in toward one sedan, nostrils flaring and then recoils. "Augh. Someone had sex in there. That's so nasty." He draws closer to Derek, bumping into him in a way that would probably seem clumsy if you didn't know he was taking on some of Derek's scent, and leaving his own on Derek. "Why are we here, anyway? Is this something about the Alpha Pack?"

"We're here because I need a new car." 

Isaac spins around, wide-eyed. "What's wrong with the Camaro?" He sounds as wounded as if it's his car.

Derek nudges him back, moving past the lines of low slung sedans to the bigger vehicles; mini-vans like giant eggs and pick-ups like the one his aunt had to haul lumber and scrap metal, and SUVs that look like he's either joining a militia group or a government agency. 

"It needs some work," Derek admits, with a shrug, like he wasn't cursing over the engine just that afternoon. "But that's not why."

They're all ugly and functional and slow, the opposite of sleek, the opposite of sexy. 

"We need a new car." Derek bends to look in the interior of one of the mid-sized SUVs and is slightly—grudgingly—impressed by the amount of legroom inside. "Something bigger."

He hears Isaac's indrawn breath but ignores it, moving around the car to look at the amount of cargo space in the back. Then, quietly—but not quiet enough to hide the wobble in the middle: "Do you really think we're going to find Erica and Boyd?"

"I do," Derek says, holding steady to his voice and scent. He straightens up to look at Isaac. Putting a hand on Isaac's shoulder feels fake, theatric, bordering on absurd, but Isaac's weight shifts slightly into the touch and so Derek leaves his fingers hanging there. "If they were dead, we would've found their bodies by now. So they're not dead. And if they're not dead, we can find them."

Isaac nods, looking at Derek with such luminous belief that Derek's glad he didn't eat anything more as his stomach sours in knots around what little is in there. 

The trail to find the missing betas is stone cold and he and Peter are pretty much out of ideas on how else to find them. Peter's of the opinion that the Alpha Pack has them, holding them hostage for who knows what reason. Derek hates agreeing with Peter, just on principle, but more and more, he's feeling like Peter is right. And if that's true, what can he do then? How does he save them? All of them?

"We'll find them," Derek repeats, before looking up and past Isaac at the saleswoman headed their way. She looks a little like Erica, the same brass highlights to her blonde hair, the pouting bottom lip made fuller by the darkness of her lipstick. When she gets a good look at him, her step and heartbeat stutter a bit, the waft of her—soap and perfume and the woody scent of the woman herself—get stronger as her skin warms. 

Though the Camaro had been (mostly) his choice, it'd been Laura who did all the negotiation, Laura who has—had—all the experience. She always did all the talking. 

Scott would probably look at this as some kind of opportunity. A learning experience, something. Something optimistic and full of sunshine and rainbows. Derek will just be happy if he doesn't get cheated out of _all_ his dirty blood money. 

The saleswoman holds out her hand, upping the wattage on her already brilliant smile and Derek makes himself smile and reach his hand out to meet her.

☽ ☾ 

"I can't believe you are actually doing homework," Stiles says over his shoulder, in between throwing popcorn kernels in the air and trying—and mostly failing—to catch them in his mouth. On the TV, Chris Hemsworth is about to jump his motorcycle into an invisible wall and die.

"I have school tomorrow," Scott says, like he's already says the other dozen times Stiles has complained about it. His stomach is growling for more popcorn, more food, period, but he ate his bowl's worth, Stiles isn't sharing and he's too lazy to get up and make more. Scott compares the numbers in the textbook with the ones he wrote on his scratch paper, frowning. Something's not right somewhere. "I gotta get my grades back up, man. My mom'll kill me if I flunk summer school, too." 

The upshot of everything that happened is that his mom finally understands what happened with his grades, with his everything, last year, but she also made it perfectly clear she expects him to do better and though his mom's threats are about as meaningless as any time she estimates she's going to be home, he can't stand that look of helpless disappointment on her face. 

Scott finds the number he'd written wrong. Erases the old number and scribbles the corrected one in. "Besides, I promised myself I'm going to do better this next year."

"And you think fucking Derek Hale is the way to go with that?" Stiles tilts his head over the couch back so he's blinking upside down at Scott. 

Scott sighs and tosses his pencil down. It bounces off the side of his phone—no new calls, no texts—and rolls; Scott stops it absently with his thumb. He knew this was going to come up again. Stiles is just like his dad; neither one of them can let go of a puzzle and yeah, okay, what the hell Scott's doing with Derek is probably the biggest puzzle of all, but he hoped he'd have more time to come up with an answer. 

"I'm not…" Scott rolls the pencil back and forth, letting the bitten yellow barrel fill his vision. "It's not what you think."

Stiles twists and flops around in a particularly disturbing and boneless way until he's perched on the couch's back. "So what is it, then?" He spreads his hands wide between his knees. "Because last I checked, you didn't even _like_ Derek all that much."

"I know." Scott nods. This is quieter Stiles, serious Stiles. Which has the benefit of being less hysterical Stiles, too, but it's harder to distract him when he's like this, too. 

Stiles is watching him now, eyes sharp as Scott's, missing nothing. "And you know, the first time, okay, sure, though I still think it's crazy and weird and seriously skeevy that the only way he could come up with to 'help' you is to jerk you off." 

"But it worked!" Scott protests. God, his math homework was so much easier than this. 

Stiles clutches his head, his hair long enough to stick up through the spaces in his long fingers. "So not the point!"

Scott flicks the pencil across the table and off the other side. "What _is_ the point?"

Stiles looks left and right as if for some invisible audience, throwing up his hands. "The point is: _what are you doing_ , man? I know you miss Allison, I get that…"

Beneath his skin, Scott flinches, that yawing darkness opening again in his chest like a poisoned flower. It shouldn't hurt this much. He told Allison it was okay; it shouldn't hurt like this, still.

"…I really get that, but Derek is bad news, he is very bad news. And just…." Stiles jerks in one of his Kermit the Frog imitations. " _What are you doing?_ " 

"Stop asking me that!" Scott's fingers ache as his nails start to lengthen; he grips the table's edge and sucks air, fighting the change, fighting the wolf, who wants to snap and bite, root in the soft parts. 

When he gropes for the memories—human memories—to put up as a blockade between him and the wolf, Scott thinks that what'll come is the sweet friction of his cock against Derek's, but what comes instead is friction of a different kind: the movement of Derek's mouth on his. 

He surprised himself when he kissed Derek; it'd been a bigger surprise to realize Derek was kissing him back, that they were kissing, coming down, easy and slow, like it was something they'd done hundreds of times before, something they always did. A surprise to realize that, even though they'd both come, though they were both covered in it, they were in apparently no hurry to stop, to disentangle.

Everything with Allison had always been so frantic, so hurried, ( _no, not Allison, don't think about Allison_ ), always stolen time. Not having to worry about it, to be able to just _go_ , as long as they wanted to, as long as it still felt good…

_(actually, Scott's mouth feels a little sore, in retrospect, and he broke out his lip balm for the first time since February, but it's a good soreness, one he likes)_

Kissing Derek hadn't sucked.

"It's helping," Scott says, when he can breathe again, unrestricted, clear. There are tiny scars from the tips of his claws in the table, but it's the cheap one, from IKEA, and not the good one in the dining room that belonged to Grandma Rodriguez, so his mom probably won't do more than sigh. Scott traces his fingers over the small indents before sighing and looking up at Stiles. "I know you hate Derek…"

"I don't hate him," Stiles interrupts promptly, "I hate his crazy, murderous uncle, I hate his creepy Edward Cullen stalkeriness, and his habit of breaking your bones to make a point…"

"Did you just make a Twilight reference?" Scott asks.

Stiles rubs the back of his neck. "Yeah, I'm not proud of that." He jabs his finger at Scott. "The point still stands, though."

Scott frowns, replaying the last couple minutes. "What's your point?"

"That— _disliking_ —Derek used to be something we had in common." The back of the couch creaks as Stiles' shifts his weight and Scott hopes it doesn't break. Stiles' isn't nearly as weedy as he used to be, and that won't get just a sigh and a look from his mom. 

" _We_ disliked him," Stiles repeats, as Scott gets up from the table and hops over the couch's back, settling in his favorite spot in the corner on the side with the lounger. He grabs the popcorn bowl and sorts through the detritus for any good kernels.

Stiles slips down from the back to sit sideways and cross-legged, hands twisting and untwisting in the space between. "And now…what? He's your boyfriend? Your new best friend?"

"No," Scott objects immediately, a rejection so thorough he can't even come up with other words to put around it. "No."

"Then what?" Stiles is worried about him, Scott can see that, smell it, but it's covered all over in the bright-eyed and vaguely lemony need to know how the pieces fit together. 

Scott tosses a half-handful of rescued popcorn into his mouth. "If I was getting laid with anyone else, you'd be cheering me on."

"But it's not anyone else," Stiles argues, which, really, Scott totally knew he would. "It's Derek."

On the TV, Dana is getting beaten and tossed around and half-drowned on the dock while everyone in the control room celebrates. It's Scott's least favorite part of the movie, it always makes him a little sick and a little sad, and he looks away again, back at Stiles. "I don't have a plan," Scott says and shrugs. "I don't know what I'm doing. I don't…" 

The words, _I don't know how I feel_ , are right there, almost spilling off his tongue, but it feels like too much, too big an admission, like telling Stiles about him and Derek sitting there and making out afterward, and Scott can't make himself say it. He's always known how he feels, even if he hasn't always known what to do about it. 

"It's just sex," Scott says finally. "He's there and he's willing and," _when it's happening, I don't have to think about Allison,_ "it feels good," Scott finishes. That, at least, is something he can cop to, shrugging. "It feels really good."

Stiles doesn't look satisfied—the pieces don't fit together well enough for that—but he looks…what's the word? Mollified. Which, really, is going to have to be good enough; Scott doesn't have more to give right now. "Huh," he says, rubbing his cheek with his knuckles. "I always thought if one of us was going to bang a dude, it would be me."

"Why you?" Scott sort-of laughs, not sure if he should be offended or what. 

"I am totally attractive to guys!" Stiles protests, straightening up. "Ask Danny!"

As Scott recalls, Danny's never weighed in definitively on that, but Scott holds up his hands. "Okay, man." This is not an argument he wants to get into with Stiles. Again. 

Still, it feels good, almost like normal, like they didn't just stumble over another invisible line of permanent and unwelcome change. Like everything's not changing too fast for Scott to keep a grip on it all, or any of it.

"And it's just sex?" Stiles says suddenly, jalapeno suspicion burning at the edge of the question. 

"Yeah," Scott says, because seriously, what else would it be? Still, that feeling floods back, the terrifying sense that the foundation under he and Stiles is shifting, dissolving, transforming into something like Jackson changing into the kanima. Scott stirs the kernels in the bottom of the bowl around, even though he knows he's picked out anything really edible. "Is that okay?"

"Well, _no_." Stiles snorts and prods Scott in the knee with his socked foot. "But it's your dick. Far be it from me to tell you who you can fuck with it."

☽ ☾ 

Derek never sleeps well on the nights just before the full moon, filled with silvery restlessness and a corresponding darkness like the spaces between the stars. The nightmares are the worst now; not just Gerard, but all the demons and ghosts, all the dreams where everyone's still alive, all the ones where everyone dies, Scott and Erica and Isaac and Boyd and even Stiles and that red-headed girl that Peter attacked, and it's only sometimes at his hands, but either way, it's all his fault. Always his fault.

It's quiet on the roof and high enough above the street that he can smell the trees of the Preserve. Economic downturn means there's generally no one to see him up there and that anyone who does won't care, far enough away from them to be no threat.

_(it's a lie; it'd hurt, but he could vault down from the roof's edge, mobile enough even before the bones started healing to tear someone's throat out, rip through their belly, he could do it, if he wanted to, if he needed to)_

Derek's not sitting on the edge, though, not wanting to give his wolf that much temptation. He lies on his back on the sun-baked tar in the middle, slow heat radiating into his skin as he looks up at the sky. 

He only slightly has to resist the urge to howl. The wolf knows as well as he does how few voices there are to answer, shares the shivery fear that one of these times, no one will answer at all.

He thinks of the Toyota. Tomorrow, he's going to the bank to get a cashier's check for an amount of money that makes him slightly sick, and he'll trade in the Camaro ( _His car, Laura's car, their getaway car, she'd always called it_ ) for whatever he can get for it, and then it'll be his. Theirs. A gesture of hope that may ultimately turn out to be absolutely fruitless. 

Really _expensive_ hope. 

Derek's cell buzzes against his hip bone. Derek fishes his phone from his pocket and looks at the display. It's a text message from Scott, of all people: _Thx for today._

Derek's abs twinge with the laugh that rolls through his chest. Of course Scott would write a thank you note even for sex. Of course he would. 

Before Derek can even think up something to say in return, his phone vibrates again; another message from Scott: _Maybe again sometime?_

Derek blinks, eyebrows arching. He'd been operating under an assumption that Scott was just having full-moon fever…but that's more about immediate gratification than making plans. Making…dates?

_Isn't it past your bedtime?_ Derek texts back.

_Can't sleep._

_Come out,_ Derek types impulsively. _We can run._

Derek's blood surges a little at the thought; the cool and darkness of the forest, long miles in which to stretch and run and play. It's been a long time since he's been able to do that; run for the fun of it, the pleasure.

_Can't,_ comes the reply, before Derek or the wolf can get too excited. Then, a couple seconds later: _Stiles is here tonight. Don't want to leave him alone._

Derek _hehs_ and lets his phone drop to his chest and his arms fall to his sides again. No surprise there, that Stillinski's in the way even when he's sleeping. Derek doesn't wonder as much anymore why Scott keeps Stiles around, but it doesn't makes Stiles himself any easier to take. Though Derek is trying. 

The cell rattles again. _Sorry,_ Scott says. 

_Don't care,_ Derek types back, because it's nothing to him, one way or the other, what Scott does. _Have fun braiding each other's hair._ Derek grins.

He starts to put the phone down again, then pauses. Slower, he types: _Full moon tomorrow. Come out w/us then?_ Derek stares at it for several seconds before hitting **SEND**. 

"What're you doing?" Isaac's voice is sleepy, not accusatory and when Derek turns his head, Isaac looks like an oversized kid, standing slack, rubbing his gritty eyes. 

"Couldn't sleep." He jerks his shoulder the best he can while lying flat on his back and Isaac crosses the roof to him, folding down close enough that his knee almost touches Derek's arm. Along with the sweaty, thick smell of sleep on Isaac's skin is the now-familiar vinegar tang of fear. 

Derek's not the only one with nightmares. 

He reaches up, ignoring it when Isaac flinches, and tugs Isaac by his sleeve, to lie down next to him. "Oh," Isaac says, when he's stretched out, surprise like linseed oil. "It's really warm."

"Feels good, right?" Derek nods knowingly. There's so many things that he's failing to teach Isaac ( _that he failed to teach Scott, Jackson, failed to teach Boyd and Erica_ ), about being a werewolf, about _how_ to be one, about their history, so big, so rich; it's absurdly satisfying to be able to give him this one thing, however small. 

Isaac's hum of agreement almost cancels out the buzz of Derek's cell, but the tickle of it across his breastbone grabs his attention. He'd almost forgotten he was waiting for Scott's answer: _Yeah sounds good._

"Scott?" Isaac asks.

Derek nods, the scritch of his hair against the roof oddly soothing. "He's coming out with us tomorrow."

"Oh," Isaac says again. It's distinctly less pleased than the first time.

Derek doesn't need Isaac's approval or permission. "What?" The wolf bristles in Derek's voice. 

"Nothing." 

Isaac insists his dad wasn't always a monster, but however few years he spent torturing Isaac, the scars run deep. It's too early to say Isaac's stunted but if the scars were a little less metaphorical, they'd be keloiding over, the kind that binds the flesh and catches at the muscle. Isaac's not weak, but he'll never be an alpha. 

Derek doesn't know whether he's grateful or sad about that. 

"Isaac—"

Isaac springs, faster than Derek thought he could, so he's crouching over Derek, eyes flashing reflective amber even in the low light. "Why Scott?" Isaac asks, tilting his head. "Why not me?" He backs down Derek's body, scenting and rubbing his face down Derek's shirt. "It could be me. Everything he does for you, I could do it, if you'd let me."

Isaac reaches Derek's crotch, breathing hotly into the crease of his groin and it jolts Derek out of his paralysis. He shoves Isaac, harder than he means to, and Isaac skids across the roof before he uses his talons to scratch to a halt. 

"Why?" Isaac asks again, on his hunkers and his head down. "Why not me?"

He doesn't smell aroused, not even a little bit. 

"What's wrong with me?"

"Isaac…" Derek shakes his head. Where the hell did this come from? "You don't, you don't even _want_ this…"

"Does it matter?"

_"Does it matter?"_ Derek's stomach rolls like he's going to puke. "Isaac, is this something your dad…?"

"No," Isaac says, steady enough and firm enough, in all senses, that Derek has to take it as absolute truth. "No. He never. Never."

Derek jams his tongue against the roof of his mouth against the deeper lurch in his gut. "Then did I?" It's harder to say the rest, but Derek forces himself. "Make you think that's something I want from you?"

Isaac huffs, shoulders hunching deeper. "I don't know what you want from me!" It's not a shout, but it might as well be, hurt and bitterness smoking acrid from every word. "You don't want anything. You don't want me. You just want _Scott._ "

_"Not to replace you,"_ Derek says, just as hard, because, fuck, how can Isaac not know that? He reaches out and drags Isaac close again, putting his face right up in Isaac's, nose to nose. "Just 'cause I don't want to have sex with you…" Derek doesn't know how to end that sentence. It's probably better he doesn't. 

He shakes Isaac a little, not hard—not hard—because Isaac's fragile, so humanly fragile, and: "You're mine," he says, because that much, at least, Derek is rock solid on. "My wolf, my get…I _made you_." Isaac looks at him with those huge want-to-believe eyes. "I made you," Derek repeats, quieter. 

He slings his arm around Isaac's neck and pulls the other wolf tight to his side, rubbing his cheek, his face, into Isaac's hair. Isaac's shoulders and breath hitch, all his weight falling into Derek as if from a height.

"You're my wolf," Derek says, showering Isaac in the words as thoroughly as he covers him with his scent. "Mine."

☽ ☾ 

The sound of Stiles' Jeep laboring up the driveway's slight incline makes Derek pause mid-pull-up, letting his senses spread and sharpen, though with the moon as close as it is, everything is already almost sharp enough to cut.

Of all the shocks of the last week, Stiles tracking him down to confront him about Scott is the least surprising, like watching a chain of dominos fall. Scott told Stiles, because he tells Stiles everything, and Stiles thinks Derek is evil incarnate, and now, _quid pro quo, Clarice_ , Stiles is here. 

Isaac hears it a moment after Derek does, looks a question across the room. Derek drops to the floor in a puff of dust and shakes his head, snatching his shirt off the hallway newel. 

By the time the Jeep speeds—too fast—out of the trees and skids to a halt, Derek is outside and clothed, leaning against the RAV's bumper. Waiting for the little terrier Stiles to come and snap at his ankles. 

Stiles jerks the emergency brake with a crunch that makes Derek wince and is scrambling out of the Jeep almost before it stops rocking on its shocks. "What, huh?" Derek can smell Stiles anger almost before the funk of teenage boy. Stiles throws up his arms like a challenge, shoulders squared. They look broader than just the last time Derek's seen him, though he still looks like he has too many bones and not enough skin to cover them. "You couldn't just bully him into being on your side, so now you think you're going to fuck him into it?"

Derek wants to straighten up, he wants to be _moving_ , he wants to take Stiles by his too-big head and put him down in the leaf mast until he shows belly and learns some respect. 

He doesn't do any of that. He stays where he is, ass glued to the bumper, despite all his inclinations. 

"What did you do?" Stiles demands, stalking up to Derek like he's any kind of threat. "What did you do to him?"

He is really fucking tired of being called either a rapist or a sorcerer. Still, a sped-up montage of all the things he'd done to Scott flickers like a lightning bolt across Derek's mind, hazy heat of a different kind coiling around the more volatile simmer in his belly. 

"Augh," Stiles says, the righteous fury on his face melting into a more familiar disgust. "Stop, with your face…don't… I can't unsee that!"

Derek allows himself a smirk, just enough to make Stiles look that much more cross-eyed with horror and get that much closer before he says, "Scott came to _me_." He doesn't even raise his voice. 

"For _help_." Stiles enunciates both words with excruciating clarity, the 'p' almost like Stiles dragged his fingertip over Derek's eardrum. "And you stuck your hand down his pants."

"I gave him a choice!" And Derek doesn't even know who to be pissed at here. It's just as likely Scott's covering his ass by making Derek out to be the villain—wouldn't be the first time—as it is that Stiles took Scott's story and heard what he wanted to hear. Fuck, maybe it's both. 

Derek keeps his hands from shifting only by reminding himself how much he paid for the damn Toyota and he can't mess up the paint job on its first day. "He had a choice," Derek says again, spitting each word through his clenched teeth, "and he _chose_ to have my hand down his pants. He _chose_ to come back and proposition me, after he got his wolf under control again."

Stiles heartbeat stutters and his scent shifts, though outwardly, there's nothing but a hard blink. 

"You didn't know?"

The shake of Stiles' head is brief enough that, without the painful clarity of his senses, Derek might think he imagined it. 

"He didn't tell you." Also not surprising, Derek doesn't know why it feels like a sucker punch anyway. Why would Scott tell anyone he's voluntarily having sex with Derek? 

"No," Stiles agrees, in a voice that promises he and Scott will be having a conversation about it later. The moment wavers, but Derek senses the moment Stiles decides he's going to be angry—angry with Derek—anyway. Stiles shakes himself. "Scott can barely be trusted to find his own way home. You're twice his age."

Derek frowns. He is _not_ twice Scott's age. 

"His very _not legal_ age." Stillinski arches his eyebrows and cocks his head like he's just scored a point off Derek. 

"You're not going to tell your father." Derek folds his arms over his chest.

"No?" Derek wouldn't think Stiles could get his eyebrows any higher, but he manages another couple millimeters of height. 

"No," Derek repeats smugly. "Because you might hate me but you're not going to drag Scott into it. And he would be dragged into it."

Stiles eyes flicker. Derek bets Stillinski's great at card games, poker, but he's not werewolf good. 

Stiles sighs. "Seriously, Derek," he turns around and leans against the RAV. "What are you doing?" 

Derek tilts his head and stares at Stiles. He clearly needs to work on how much Stillinski's afraid of him, because it takes a full ten seconds for Stiles to get the hint.

"Sorry!" Stiles leaps away from the SUV, looks from Derek to the car, then leans forward and polishes the place where he leaned with the bottom of his tee-shirt. "Sorry." Stiles bites his lip and screws up his face. "Where were we?"

"I was bored and you were just leaving." 

Stiles crosses his arms and stands hipshot: _not moving, buddy._

Derek sighs. "What do you want, Stiles?"

Stiles opens his mouth and it's not a scent, exactly, but Derek can practically smell the sarcasm on whatever it is he's about to say and before Stiles can get there, Derek growls. Just a little one, but enough to make Stiles lips plop shut. 

Then, after a short, impenetrable silence: "Stop having sex with him."

"No."

"Derek—" Stiles' jaw tightens, his eyes get darker, as does his smell. For a moment, Derek can see the man Stiles is going to turn into, someone far more dangerous. 

But right now, he's still Scott's scrawny friend. "No."

"He's in love with Allison."

"Good for him."

"You don't even like each other."

"I don't think that's required."

Stiles face scrunches tighter and he shifts his weight to the other leg, huffing. "He's underage."

"He's a werewolf."

"What's that got to do with anything?"

Has Stiles not been paying attention all this time? What does he think has been happening, all around him? "What doesn't it?" Derek throws out his hands. "Scott's a werewolf, he's one of us, subject to our laws, our values and those say Scott gets to make those decisions for himself."

Derek might have things to say about the shitty decision-making abilities of sixteen year-olds, especially when it comes to sex, but it doesn't change the facts of the situation. 

"He's going to get hurt," Stiles says, quieter, a note to it like he's asking Derek to fix it. Which is stupid, because history has already proven, even in their short acquaintance: Derek isn't much good at fixing things. 

Derek shrugs. "That's his choice, too."

☽ ☾ 

Derek and Isaac are waiting at the curb when Scott finally gets out of school. He probably wouldn't have even noticed it was them, except Isaac's leaning out the passenger side window, grinning with a feral excitement that Scott can't help but reciprocate as he trots over, blood quickening in his veins with an almost audible hiss.

Isaac sits back and Scott ducks a little—though not as far as before—to crane in, arms resting on the window ledge. His gaze slips from the mirrored sunglasses covering Derek's eyes to the soft but solid line of dick on display against Derek's splayed out left leg like the trail from one to the other is greased and then he doesn't know where to look. 

"This isn't the Camaro." 

Derek and Isaac snort, which, okay, hello Captain Obvious, but it's not in a mean way and the giddiness between them, Scott's starting to feel it too, now that he's not clamping it down hard to get through the long, boring hours of summer school. 

Derek jerks his head at the back seat. "Get in." 

He'd left his bike at home, hoping the run to school would shake out some of his pent-up energy, so Scott can just climb in, Derek lifting his foot off the brake before Scott's even got the door fully shut. 

Another time, Scott would probably complain, but the little spurt of adrenaline just feels good right now, like the first descending warm flush after a shot. He pulls the door the rest of the way closed and settles back against the seat, rubbing the upholstery with both palms. 

It smells acridly new-car, a scent Scott never liked, even before he had wolfy senses, but over it he can smell Derek-and-Isaac and, if they're not all one pack, those are at least scents that are familiar and say to his wolf: _friendly, friend, safe._

"Why'd you get rid of the Camaro?" 

Derek shrugs, not looking around. "It was just time."

Isaac half turns, looking around the passenger seat's edge. "We needed something bigger."

_We._ And yeah, it's not that Scott didn't know that Derek's plans were to build a new pack for himself but it's kind of the first time it seems real, something inevitable, the Hale pack phoenixing itself from some pretty literal ashes. 

"It's nice," Scott says, because it's the polite thing and because he doesn't know what else to say about it. 

Derek lifts his chin where Scott can see his mouth in the rearview and bares his teeth, half a grin and half the same smug triumph as when he'd first given the bite to Isaac and Erica and Boyd. 

Scott realizes he's rubbing his back, his butt, against the upholstery, too, working his scent into the upholstery along with Isaac's and Derek's, and makes himself stop. 

"Where are we going?" They'd never talked about it and Scott hadn't known they were going to pick him up straight from school. It's hours until sunset and longer still 'til moonrise, though Scott doesn't think they need to wait nearly that long; he feels like he could shift out of his skin right now if he didn't have to worry about who would see. 

"Thought you'd be hungry," Derek says and yeah, just at the mention of food, Scott's stomach puts in its two cents, snarling loud. 

"Cool."

☽ ☾ 

They end up at Old Country Buffet. The food is pretty uniformly crappy, but they can eat in werewolf-on-the-full-moon quantities without paying a fortune, though when Scott goes up for his fourth giant sundae with fudge and sprinkles, the manager comes out just to glare at them.

Derek pays for Scott's lunch, which makes Scott wonder if this is a date of some kind. He has no concrete feelings about that.

After all it'd taken for Scott to text Derek and ask if he wanted to hook up again sometime, Derek hadn't given Scott a clear answer, just the invitation to come out. And he'd brought Isaac. Which would suggest not-date.

Scott thinks he catches Derek looking at him a couple times in ways that go past a _hey, there you are_ kind of look—they go straight to Scott's cock, anyway—but he can't tell if it's a real thing or because he has sex on the brain. 

God, he has sex with Derek Hale on the brain…

After lunch, Derek drives them up to his family's house. Stiles told Scott that the land doesn't belong to the Hales anymore, it's county land, but the county doesn't seem to want to do anything with it and, as Scott found when he came up just yesterday, Derek can't seem to stay away from it. 

"You ever think about buying it back?" Scott asks, as they carry flats of bottled water into the house. Wolfing out is thirsty work. 

"No." Derek drops his water just inside the door and gestures for Scott to do the same, moving out of the way. When Scott slides his cases of water on top, Derek crowds close again. 

Scott's more skittish than he thinks; he flinches aside to keep from being pinned between Derek and the wall, but Derek just hooks one shifted talon into the plastic shrink wrap around the bottles and rips it away. Derek's eyebrows cock a little but he just snags a bottle from the herd and holds it out wordlessly to Scott. Scott's mouth does feel a little dry, but he shakes his head. Derek shrugs and cracks the cap off the bottle. 

He starts to lift it to his mouth—and Scott may be watching this a little more closely than he wants to admit—but then he pauses, letting it sink back to waist level. "You're not going to ask me why?" Derek asks, eyes flickering to all the little pulse points on Scott's face and throat. Scott's started to do it too, though he didn't notice until Stiles pointed it out to him. "Not going to make some heartfelt protest about how it's my family's home and how can I not want it?"

"But it's not anymore." Scott shakes his head and looks around, torn up planks in the floor, holes in the drywall, in some places, no drywall, just exposed slats. Some of the damage is damage he's done, fighting with Derek or Derek fighting with him, but not most of it. Not much of it at all. "It's just where they died." 

Derek doesn't say anything, just flexes his eyebrows and his jaw before tipping the bottle up to his mouth but Scott feels it anyway, a knowing outside his senses, like when Derek made him go into the basement at Isaac's house and showed him the freezer. He feels Derek's surprise, that Scott would know that, guess it. 

"Where's Isaac?" 

He never came in with them. Scott listens for him, but it's hard to hear anything over the sudden panicky jump of his own pulse, imagining hunters, imagining the Argents, Gerard… He glances at Derek, who's just finishing his water calmly, crumpling up the plastic in his fingers like a beer can. Derek shrugs. "He'll catch up with us later." 

He doesn't look or sound happy about it, though honestly, Scott can count about ten seconds of time in which Derek looked or sounded happy and at least half of them were when he had Scott's dick in his hand. 

"Oh," Scott says, when no other words come to mind, crowded out by the sense memory of Derek gripping his dick. He goes over to the water, as much to keep Derek from seeing his face as to kill the tongue-shrinking dryness in his mouth and throat. All the bottles are room temperature, but Scott's so thirsty, it doesn't matter.

"He probably assumes we're going to have sex," Derek says and Scott spews all over the peeling drywall and floor. 

"You did that on purpose!" Scott accuses, wiping water from his mouth and chin as he whips around. 

Derek shrugs again, but there's a curl to his lips, the jerk. 

"I said it's what he thinks, not that it's what's going to happen." Derek leans back against the wall, using his elongated nails to punch through the crumpled plastic still in his hand and peel pieces of it outward like flower petals. 

Scott looks down at his own water bottle, twisting the crinkly plastic back and forth in his fingers. Derek's eyes on him, like he's waiting for Scott to say something, waiting for an answer, is like a weight. But Scott doesn't know what Derek wants him to say. The lack of an answer before seemed like an answer. And now…what? Maybe sex is back on the table? 

The itch that Scott's been trying to push to the background all day blooms, spreading everywhere and making his skin feel too small and hot. 

_Are you going to do this? Are you really going to do this?_

He is.

Scott sets the bottle of water down on the floor, aware of Derek's eyes on him as he moves. When he makes himself meet Derek's gaze, there's nothing helpful there; Derek doesn't look especially interested, but he doesn't look _dis_ interested, either. Scott wishes he'd taken at least one last sip of water. "Does that mean it won't?" Scott asks, his voice wobbling between gravelly-dry and embarrassingly squeaky. "Um Happen?"

Derek's breath hisses out his nostrils, somewhere between impatience and a laugh, and he shifts his weight from one foot to the other, crossing his arms. "Do you want it to?" Derek sounds bored, but there's a tension in his body that makes Scott think Derek isn't as bored as he's trying to look. Scott sure hopes so, anyway. 

Walking into Derek's personal space is a little dicey; he remembers Derek jerking him off, his body also remembers the more numerous times that Derek's hurt him. The danger makes it a little hotter, though, too, the not-knowing. 

Remembering how it felt when Derek did it to him, Scott leans in. "I said I did," Scott says, pitching his voice low so it doesn't shake. He scents up the side of Derek's throat, so close Derek's stubble tickles the tip of his nose, his lips. 

Derek hasn't showered; there's no scent of soap on him, or even deodorant. He can smell that Derek's sweat hard today, sour and funky. Tastes it, when he rasps his tongue up that same length of skin. Derek inhales and he grabs Scott's shoulder, fingers closing hard, hard enough to bruise if Scott's body still did that.

"What do you want?" Scott asks, because Derek's gone along with him, but he's never come out and said that he wants Scott. Or anything. Derek's facial hair burns his lips as Scott nips and sucks the soft skin underneath. 

Derek's other hand kneads Scott's side in exact time to each movement of Scott's lips, nails biting the skin, encouragement and direction both, urging Scott in to him. 

Scott thinks that's going to be his only answer to the question, Scott forgets that there _is_ a question, scenting and sucking and biting across Derek's neck, pulling on the neck of his shirt to get to his shoulder, his collarbone, his chest. 

"Your mouth." 

Tugs too hard, apparently; the ribbed cotton tears in a purr. Scott spreads his fingers over the expanse of newly bared skin, touching first, and then scratching, too light to leave more than a momentary pink blush. "What?" 

Derek sighs, though it sounds more shuddery than his usual impatience. Scott drags his mouth away and his eyes up from Derek's shoulder. Derek blinks slowly like he's tired or just waking up before he turns his face to look at Scott. "I want your mouth."

"Like a kiss?" Scott's gaze darts between Derek's face and the flex of his fingertips against Derek's smooth, unmarked skin. Kissing Derek had been…nice. Really nice. He wouldn't mind doing that again.

Derek just looks at Scott. 

"I…oh."

Derek threads his fingers through Scott's and drags Scott's hand down his body to his dick, swelled tight against the confining denim of his jeans. Reflexively, Scott cups the bulge and Derek flexes against the touch, holding Scott there as he ruts. 

"You asked what I wanted," Derek says, voice rougher. "Don't worry, I don't expect you to actually do it." Derek's pale eyes gleam, mouth curved with something like satisfaction, like Scott's failed some test that Derek always knew he would.

The thing is, Scott likes to think of himself as a good guy, one who comes through in a crunch. Not that this is a crunch, it's not a disaster or crisis or anything. It's not like that at all. Wow, it's nothing like that. But Scott is a guy that comes through, is the point. 

But this is a guy's dick in his mouth, they're talking about. That's a much bigger deal that just putting your hand on someone's dick or letting some guy put his hand on yours. 

It doesn't sound so awful, though, once Scott gets past the initial freak out of _but I've never done that before!_ Derek keeps a pretty tight rein on his scent since he became Alpha, but he can't hide the smell of his cock, the bitter tang of precome, the hot prickle of sweat. Derek is turned on, he wants this.

And Scott thinks maybe he does, too.

_I don't have to tell Stiles. I don't have to tell anyone. I could do this. I can do it and no one has to know. No one but me and Derek has to know._

Scott grinds the heel of his hand down the swell of Derek's cock one last time before he grabs the waistband of Derek's jeans and thumbs the button free of the hole. Derek inhales and a little zing of triumph goes through Scott, bright and feral, to go with everything else. Scott lowers the zipper and goes to his knees at the same time, breath breezing hard through his lungs, hard so he feels it, as he prepares to get head to head with Derek Hale's dick. 

Getting Derek out of his shorts is more difficult, clingy boxer briefs; after Scott fumbles for a couple seconds, Derek snarls and does it himself, shoving them and his jeans halfway down his thighs. Scott tugs them down the rest of the way, lets them pool around Derek's ankles. Without those layers, the scent of him is stronger, more intense, more deeply tempting. 

Scott only has a second to take in how pale Derek's thighs are, how hairy, and that fat, uncircumcised dick, the big, dark red head just starting to peek out of the foreskin, before Scott _needs_ to lean in, nosing at the sweat-damp crease of Derek's groin, scenting along those hard cut lines, following them again with his tongue. The taste of Derek is so thick here, so complicated and rich, not like anywhere else on his body; Scott moans a little as it bursts over his taste-buds, clutching Derek's legs with either hand. 

He pushes Derek's thighs further apart, greedy, needy as he chases those smells and tastes, along the plump, furred sacs of Derek's balls, further back, deeper.

"Scott. Fuck, _Scott._ "

He's almost forgotten that this is a body, a person, Derek. It takes Derek's fingers in his hair, sharp, hard, dragging his head back, for Scott to remember, for Scott to come back. Scott whines in his throat, wanting, needing, _please._

Derek looks at him. Scott looks back for long, hungry seconds before Derek huffs out, taking hold of his dick and guiding it to Scott's mouth. 

Scott closes his eyes and licks across that slick, peeking head, another explosion of unfamiliar flavors. He roots his tongue into that enclosing foreskin, exploring the soft-hard bulb of Derek's head, suckles slick-salt precome from the slit, faint urine tang underneath it. 

Derek's breath shakes out of him, his fingers flexing in Scott's hair. He won't give Scott more, though. Growl building in his throat, Scott knocks Derek's hand away, gripping the thick base of Derek's dick himself, for himself. He squeezes and he feels it go through Derek, head to toes, bone-deep shudder and it floods through Scott hot and joyous, victorious. 

He sucks at Derek, taking him, sliding his mouth along that thickness, letting its weight on his tongue stretch him wider to take more and more and even more...

…and it's still not enough. 

Scott slides his hands back, around Derek's taut-held thighs, to just under the jutting curve of his ass. Derek's body is so tense; the first tug of Scott's fingers, Derek almost over-balances, cock pistoning deep; Scott can't breathe for a second, throat shrinking up tight. He doesn't have time to actually choke before Derek recovers, legs spreading wider, weight pushing back and the hand entangled in Scott's hair shoving the opposite direction. 

Scott throws up his shoulder, refuses to let Derek push him away entirely, still rubbing his tongue up and along the fat underside vein, sliding foreskin. 

"Dammit, Scott!" Derek says, but it's not mad, it's shattered, it's Derek falling to pieces. 

Scott pulls him on again, makes Derek thrust between his lips, makes him do it again, stronger, more definitive, until Derek doesn't need the goad anymore, he holds Scott's head in place and fucks Scott's mouth. Hard. 

The pivot of Derek's hips is more erratic than when Scott controlled the motion, but that only makes it better, the unevenness, the not-knowing. The bitterness gets stronger as Derek paints the inside of Scott's mouth, slick drops slipping down his throat with each swallow, each time Derek's cock head nudges into the tightness at the back. On each exhale, a noise, not quite whine or whimper or moan, that Scott hears Derek fighting to stifle, to swallow back, and his heart, racing hard, racing loud, a stuttering drumbeat in counter to the grab and tug of his fingers in Scott's hair. 

Like a song, Scott can hear the crescendo coming, feel it in Derek's stuttering, frantic rhythm. He's ready for it when Derek tries to peel him away again, cupping Derek's ass, digging in and stiffening his arms and shoulders: _no, not going._ There's a moment, then, where Derek can't keep fighting him. His fingers go slack and he half folds; Scott sucks harder, deeper. 

The noise Derek makes sounds torn out of him, desperate, bordering on pain, and he bucks hard, spearing deep, and even knowing what's coming, the hot spurt of his come is a shock, splashing into the back of Scott's mouth, coating his tongue. Scott laps at Derek's slit and Derek jerks again, squirts again. Once more and then Derek lets out a sigh like an explosion, holding himself upright on Scott's shoulder.

Scott lets Derek's softening cock slip out slowly, still cupping it warmly in his hand as he turns his head and spits.

☽ ☾ 

Scott turns his head and spits. Then, while Derek's still trying to figure out if his legs will hold him, Scott noses into the crease of Derek's leg again with a soft, greedy noise, licks in broad, wet swipes.

"Scott," Derek groans weakly, twitching and twitchy with each stroke of Scott's tongue. "Scott…" 

The lines, the bones of Scott's face, are normal, but when Derek grabs Scott's chin and forces his face to tilt up, he fully expects to see the amber-gold flash of his wolf's eyes. It's the only thing that can make sense to Derek of what the fuck just happened, the shift from _I'm not sure about this_ to full-tilt-boogie cocksucking, but when Scott's eyes flicker open, they're glazed, they're hazy but they're also fully, indisputably, ordinary human brown. Derek's thumb smudges across Scott's jaw as if he can just smear Scott's human face aside.

Derek can't tell if the sound Scott makes is _no_ or just "Nnn…" but he jerks his chin out of Derek's loose grip, mouthing gently—too gently, fuck—at the base of Derek's cock while his fingers release to fist between his own legs. 

"Scott, wait, wait…" A ridiculous panic that he somehow _broke_ Scott (with his _dick_ , what the hell?) fluttering in the back of his mind, Derek urges Scott's mouth away from his cock again and goes to his knees, the hardwood gritty on his unprotected skin. "I'll do it." He pushes Scott's hand aside to get to the jeans button, ease the zipper over the bulge of Scott's dick. Scott moans inarticulately, half-protest, half-need. "Let me. I got it, okay? Let me."

Scott sighs when Derek takes hold of him, leaning in and dragging his lips in soft, wet kisses over Derek's half-naked shoulder, up his neck. One hand bunches in Derek's shirt, ripping it more. "Could really get used to the feel of you on my dick," Scott slurs, sounding shitfaced drunk, though his fingers are sure, strong, when they close over Derek's encouraging Derek to grip him, stroke him, harder. 

Derek's gotten a lot better dirty talk, hell, a lot _dirtier_ dirty talk, but Scott's confession goes right to Derek's spent cock, a hot nasty tingle, a spreading flush. 

Derek zeroes in on the bared curve of Scott's throat, biting, sucking, chewing, wanting to bruise him, _mark_ him. Scott cries out, but he pushes in instead of jerking away and his cock swells even harder in the cage of Derek's moving fingers. 

When Derek reaches the soft, tender skin behind Scott's ear, Scott makes that shocked, pained sound again, and he arches up taut, the bitter-sour stink of jizz melding with the warm, thick rain of it on Derek's chest, his belly. 

"Fuck," Scott moans, grinding his forehead into Derek's collarbone as he rolls his hips, rutting his softening cock between Derek's sticky fingers. "Oh, God, oh, fuck…" 

Derek puts his arm around Scott, hugging him close. "Shhh."

"That was…" Even with a werewolf's healing, Scott's voice is trashed, raspy and gargling. "Fuck, that was, I can't…"

"Yeah, I know, shhh," Derek says again. He's not ready to use his brain or his words yet. "Sshhh."

Scott slings his arm around Derek's waist, a mirror of the way Derek's holding him and just nods against Derek's shoulder. Derek stares at the light slanting into the old, burned house and all the churned up dust motes floating in it and politely ignores Scott weeping soundlessly on his arm.

☽ ☾ 

"I'm going to look for Isaac," Derek says carefully, once Scott's dried up and they're doing nothing but kneeling there and holding on to each other. Scott nods. Then, just when Derek thinks he's going to have to say it again, Scott inhales sharply and sits back on his heels, tucking himself back in his boxers, pulling at his jeans.

Derek drags at his own clothes. His shirt's a lost cause. He wore it today because it's been on the edge of destruction for months anyway; guess it's finally done. He shucks it over his head and wipes at his body, not very effectively. Scott's come is all over him and mostly dry; it won't take any enhanced sense of smell to know they've been fucking. He pulls his underwear and jeans up so he's not hanging balls out and goes over to the flats of water. 

"Scott?" 

Scott catches the bottle Derek tosses to him. He cracks it open and pours it right over his head, tipping his face back into the deluge. Derek finds himself staring, but shakes himself out of it and looks away before Scott catches him at it. 

Even with everything they've done—that he's done _to_ Scott—he hasn't really thought of Scott as sexual, as someone he might desire. He's thought of Scott in a lot of different ways, but never that. 

Derek slops water over himself, alternating it with scrubbing with his ruined shirt. He ought to say something to Scott. Probably. Scott's first blow-job, first time he's got another guy's dick in his mouth and…what? Derek still doesn't know what happened and it doesn't seem like the kind of thing you can ask about, exactly. He remembers that feeling, of too much, all at once. No one ever asked him about it and Derek was just as grateful.

When Derek finishes his hasty bath, Scott's sitting on the stairs, stray droplets like crystals snagged in his hair, on his skin. His head's down and his hands are locked up together between his knees. He doesn't look like someone who just came his brains out. 

"Look," Derek says, "if you don't want to come out with us tonight…" 

It's probably not the right thing to say, but seems like the least he can do is give Scott an out. An escape, an excuse, whichever.

Scott's head comes up. His eyes are still red, red-rimmed, but they're steady. "No," he says, just as steadily, "I'm coming." 

Derek thinks about arguing the point, but it seems stupid. If Scott's old enough to decide who he wants to fuck, he's more than old enough to decide who he wants to spend his time with. It just feels weird that Scott would make the choice to be around him. 

The thought makes Derek snort. Having sex with Scott barely pings his radar, but the idea that Scott might voluntarily spend time hanging out with him, _that's_ what fills him with horror. 

Scott straightens from his slump, a familiar fire sparking in his eyes, tightening up his jaw, his shoulders. "I said I'm coming."

"I heard you the first time," Derek bristles back. "It's not always about you, Scott."

"Oh." Like the puppy he still mostly is, the fight falls out of Scott, he just looks tired. "Sorry, I…"

"I'm going to go find Isaac," Derek says again, because it's been a while and if he listens, he still can't hear Isaac anywhere close. He can't let this thing with Scott blind him to everything else that's going on. And he's going to have to have another conversation with Isaac, about why he left Derek and Scott alone in the first place. He doesn't need his beta matchmaking for him, or whatever it is Isaac thought he was doing. Derek and Scott are not dating. "You coming, or what?"

"Y-yeah." Scott pushes up from his seat on the stairs. He still looks a little wrecked, but he's pulling himself together. "Yeah, right behind you."

Derek grins. "Let's hunt."

☽ ☾ 

Right about the time he's diving from the branches of a live oak to tackle Isaac, it occurs to Scott that he's never done this before.

Isaac hears or senses Scott just before Scott makes contact, dodging narrowly aside so Scott has to tuck his head and roll instead. 

From the time Peter forced the bite on him, Scott's been fighting for his life and the life of his mom, his friends. Every superhuman thing he can do has been aimed at that singular goal: survival. Survival for everyone. 

Scott barely gets his feet under him again before someone—Isaac—hits him right between his shoulder blades, pitching him forward again. 

Clawed hands on his sides keep Scott from rolling a second time, and they hit the ground hard, only Scott's palms and elbows keeping it from being a total face-plant. Growling, Isaac puts his weight on Scott's back, keeping him pinned in place, and leans in close enough that the hot puff of his breath on Scott's unprotected neck makes goosebumps skitter across Scott's skin.

"Tag," Isaac says, the words burring through his fangs. "You're it." 

There's never been time for anything fun.

Isaac smacks Scott's back, then turns it into leverage to push himself to his feet, bounding off before Scott can twist and slither up. 

This…is actually fun. 

When Derek text-suggested that Scott come out with him and Isaac, Scott hadn't known what to expect, but—totally aside from the thought that there could maybe be more sex in it for him, which Scott only thought about a little (maybe more than a little)—he'd mostly only been thinking about how he really wants some kind of lasting peace between him and Derek. 

Stiles has made Scott watch probably every nature documentary ever made about wolves, until Scott drew the line after he started having dreams narrated by David Attenborough. Scott doesn't think he actually learned anything useful from them but all of them living in a not-really-large town and the need to, therefore, get along, is pretty much common sense, Scott thinks. 

So he hadn't actually known what to expect, and he hadn't thought about it too much. And then with everything that happened at the house, Scott just wanted to get out of there, he wasn't thinking of what Derek meant by "Let's hunt." 

By the time Scott scrambles back up, Isaac has vanished from his line of sight. They've all been through here, back and forth, chasing each other; their scents are all over the ground and trees. Derek might be able to tell which trail is newer than another, but Scott sure as heck can't. He picks the direction that looks the most likely. 

Even lacrosse… It's technically a game, except it isn't, in the way that high school sports are never really just games and even if it was, it's a game against people who can't really keep up against Scott—and Isaac's—abilities, people who could really get hurt if they weren't really careful, all the time. 

Scott hears a scuff in the leaves, off to his left. He drops into a crouch, moving as low and quietly as he can. In front of him, Isaac breaks cover, momentarily back-lit by the moon, brilliant silver washes that Scott feels on his skin like a developing tan. This time, Isaac doesn't sense Scott coming; when Scott pounces, Isaac goes down with a snarl and an oof. 

It's not like Scott spends a lot of time dwelling on it or anything; this is probably the first time he's thought about it—like, really _thought_ about it—but as Isaac tries to wriggle away, Scott realizes that he and Stiles don't even wrestle and roughhouse the way they used to. 

Because Scott might hurt him. 

He doesn't have to worry about hurting Isaac, about hurting Derek. He's not even all that worried about Derek hurting him…

Scott totally jinxes himself, because it's right then when Derek's arm snakes around Scott's chest, hauling him off Isaac and tossing him halfway across the clearing.

"Not paying attention," Derek chides, shaking a finger at Scott like Dikembe Mutombo after a blocked shot. It's a toss-up whether his bared teeth are a grin or menacing. "Tsk, tsk."

It's also weird to _see_ Derek having fun. Or, since Derek's regular range of facial expressions don't actually show things like _happy_ or _fun_ , it's more Derek acting like he's having a good time, running around like kids on too much sugar…if eating too much sugar gave you the ability to jump thirty, forty feet from a standstill or run three times as fast. 

Isaac flips to his feet and takes a place just next to and behind Derek. There's no way Scott can take both of them, so he does what any sensible young werewolf would do: he runs. 

Derek howls, a noise that still makes the hair on the back of Scott's neck stand up to attention, even as it's become weirdly familiar, weirdly comforting: _here I am_. A second later, Isaac echoes with his own belling call. The urge to sound back flutters in Scott's chest, tickles against the roof of his mouth, but if he does that, he'll give away his position and the two of them will be on him in seconds. 

Scott vaults from the forest floor to a reasonably low branch, dancing for balance in his sneakers, which don't have nearly the gripping power his bare feet would. Scott barely thinks about it before he toes out of his shoes and socks. The shoes he ties together by their laces and leaves them hanging over the branch. 

It _is_ a lot easier—and better—without his sneakers. Scott hops branches for a while before climbing down and rubbing his socks all over the bark of the nearest trees. Then he finds a couple good sized stones and drops them into the toes, knotting the cotton around them. The first one, he gives a relatively gentle toss. The other, he throws as far as his arm will allow. Which is pretty far, he notes, pleased. He and Stiles should test that out sometime. 

Scott climbs back up into the trees.

☽ ☾ 

"I'm hungry," Isaac says, near dawn. They're lying in the grass near the overlook like a bunch of dropped toys. Isaac bumps Scott's hand with his fingers. "We should go to breakfast."

Scott's stomach growls its opinion, but he shakes his head. "Can't. My mom'll be getting off work soon. With everything that's happened…" Scott still has nightmares about Gerard and the kanima and his mom. "I like to go with her and pick her up, if I can." He shrugs. "It just feels…safer." 

Too late, he wonders if it was a jerk move to mention it in front of Isaac and Derek, both of them orphans and everything, but Isaac just nods, his scent mellow and steady. 

"Besides," he says, wiggling his bare and dirty toes, "who's going to let me in with no shoes?"

Isaac's smile—almost as shy to come out as Derek's—brightens over his face. "That thing with the socks, though, that was really smart."

Scott grins back. "You guys ganged up on me. I had to even up the odds somehow." He lifts his head and glances past Isaac to where Derek's lying with his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest. Scott jerks his chin toward Derek. "He sleep?"

"I'm not sleeping," Derek says, with a promptness that shows he's been listening to their every word and an irritation that, while familiar, says clearly: _the fun is over._

"Think you could give me a ride to the hospital?" Scott sits up. While they were busy chasing each other, it'd been easy to put aside his _complete humiliation_ (oh, my God), to forget for a little bit all this stuff that he didn't know what to do with, anyway. It's harder to forget as Derek pulls back into his usual 'I don't know why I let you live'. 

"Yeah." Derek opens his eyes and sits up, hooking his elbows over his knees. Scott can't read anything from Derek's face, though he guesses that Derek said yes is as encouraging as it's going to get. Or maybe he just wants to get rid of Scott as soon as possible. "We can drop you on our way to breakfast." He nods in Isaac's direction.

Isaac nods back approvingly. "Breakfast."

They all get up, brushing themselves off to not much effect. It's a good thing Scott's mom knows about him now, because Scott doesn't know what kind of lie he could come up with to explain his filthy appearance and his missing shoes and socks. Though, she's probably going to be pretty pissed about the shoes, regardless. 

They don't say much on the way back to the house or on the ride to the hospital. Another time, it might feel awkward, but seriously, Scott's just as glad, watching Beacon Hills slowly come into being around the car while he makes fists with his toes on the carpet, Die Hard style. People are just starting to get up, come out, bleary-eyed and clutching their travel mugs and waxed cups of coffee. In a couple hours, Scott needs to be at school again, a long drag of time he doesn't even want to think about, let alone how he's going to get through it. 

Though he will get through it, because he promised, and because he's not going to be That Guy, and it's just a few hours anyway. 

Scott didn't think he felt that tired, but then Derek's snapping his fingers in front of Scott's face and Derek's out on the sidewalk. 

"What happened to Isaac?" Scott swipes his thumb and forefingers across his eyes, coming up with gooey little crusties. Stiles told him it's called gound, which is just ugly enough a word to be the truth. Stiles also told him what it's made of, but Scott deliberately forgot that part the moment he could. The passenger seat is empty; Scott's the only one left in the car. 

"He went inside," Derek says. "We're going to eat in the cafeteria."

Scott's eyebrows wrinkle. "The _hospital_ cafeteria?"

"What's wrong with the hospital cafeteria?"

The question is serious. Derek is being completely serious, which, in its own Derek-like fashion, says so much about Derek. Of course, this is also a guy that went from living in a burned out shell of his family home to living in a train depot with no indoor plumbing to speak of, let alone anything like a kitchen. So sure, the hospital cafeteria probably isn't nearly as horrifying to Derek—and by extension Isaac—as it is to Scott. "Nothing." Scott fumbles with the seatbelt for a couple seconds before he manages to unhook himself. "I'm sure it'll be great."

Derek moves back onto the sidewalk, an expression on his face like he can't make up his mind if he should be pissed at Scott or not, as Scott climbs out of the SUV. 

Derek must have had a shirt in the car somewhere, no longer half-naked; without even thinking about what he's doing, Scott reaches out and tweaks the cloth where it bells loose over Derek's stomach. "You still smell like me." 

Derek's jaw gets taut, though he sounds calm when he says, "You still smell like _me_." 

Scott nods, oddly satisfied with that answer as he lets his hand fall away. He does. "I should find my mom," he says, looking past Derek at the hospital's façade and blinking in the new morning brightness. Though it's not near patient parking, Derek brought him around to the employee lot side, where his mother will come out. 

"Yeah."

Scott inhales and lets it out deeply, tucking both hands in his pockets and squaring his shoulders. "Look, about earlier…"

Derek huffs and his gaze skates aside so he's no longer looking directly at Scott. "We don't have to talk about this," he says flatly. He makes a short throat-cutting gesture with his fingers. "Ever."

It's a relief. Scott can't even lie, it's such a relief. Except it's not, too, because Derek can say that they don't have to say anything, but good manners say something else, and that's the voice Scott's got to listen to. "Yeah." Scott rocks once on his heels. "I just want you to know, though…it was me, not you."

Derek finally refocuses on Scott again, and it's needle sharp, apex predator attention, and though it doesn't scare Scott exactly, it does make him get _very still_. "Yeah, Scott, I know." There's a beat, and then that pin-you-in-place attention softens and Scott can think about moving again. "Are we good?"

_Are we done?_ Scott interprets. And again, it's not like he didn't think it was going to go down exactly like this—he'd _cried_ on the guy, after all—but it still feels a little like a sucker punch as Scott makes himself say, politely, "Yeah, okay. Well, thanks for the ride," and, "See you around."

Derek grunts and that, Scott guesses, is the end of it. Dignity and manhood pretty much stripped, Scott goes to find his mom.

☽ ☾ 

"Jesus Christ, Scott, did you get _mugged_?" Scott's mom grabs him by the shoulders and the chin, turning his face to look for injuries.

"Mom. I'm okay. Mom." Scott wriggles away, both to keep his mom from grooming him like a monkey picking nits and because he doesn't need her close enough to smell Derek's spunk all over him. "I'm okay," he insists again, looking her in the eyes so she can see he means it. "It was fun. I had a good time. I just didn't have time to shower."

"Oh." She takes a step back, one hand going to her stomach and one going to her head as her heartbeat skips a little, then eases down from overdrive. "Oh, God. Okay. Okay." She breathes out and Scott is reminded all over again that his werewolf stuff isn't just his and that he's not the only one with scars from it. "Wow." His mom laughs a little shakily then tilts her head. "Okay, but what happened to your shoes?"

"Yeah…" Scott scruffs the back of his neck and gives her his most winning, Bambi-eyed smile. "Can we talk about that on our way to McDonald's drive-thru? I'm starving."

"Mmm, heh." His mom bares her teeth, looking fairly wolfish herself. "You are _so_ much your father's son sometimes." 

"Is that a no?" It's not a no.

She tosses the keys at him. "You drive, then. I'm beat."

Scott's pretty tired himself but he knows when not to argue. 

"I have to admit," his mom says, once they've done their usual battle over control of the radio (compromise: Scott picks the station, she gets to choose the volume), "I was a little nervous when you told me you were going out with Derek and that other boy…what's his name?"

"Isaac."

"Right, Isaac." She nods, chewing thoughtfully on her fingertip. "And where are his parents?"

"His dad's dead." Scott weighs the pros and cons of telling her it was at Jackson's—at the kanima's—hands, but the less he reminds her of it, the better, probably. "I don't know what happened to his mom, but I guess she's gone, too." He shrugs. 

"That's tragic." His mom shakes her head, then brushes at the hairs that came down with the gesture, tucking them behind her ear. "And…they're living together, Derek and this…Isaac?" Her eyes narrow. "Are they…? I mean, is Derek…?"

"Mom!" He completely misses the turn for the McDonald's and has to circle around the block. 

"What?" She makes wide eyes. "It's not an unreasonable question."

"It is," Scott says, successfully making the turn into the McDonald's on the second try. "It really is."

"So, they're not?"

"No! They're just…Isaac is Derek's pack. That's all." He pulls up to intercom. "What do you want, your usual?"

"Yeah." She tugs the elastic out of her hair, finger-combing it all together and winding the elastic around it again. "No. Gimme the Big Breakfast."

Scott dutifully orders her breakfast and steak-and-egg bagels for himself.

"Four? Wow." His mom leans down into the foot well, digging in her purse. "At this rate, I don't know how much longer we can afford to keep feeding you, kid. I might have to safe-haven you off at a fire station somewhere."

She's been threatening him with that one since he hit puberty. "I got it, Mom." Scott lifts up on one hip to grab his wallet. 

"Still, it's too bad," his mom says, as they pull out of the drive, munching on her hash brown patty and her feet propped on the dashboard.

"What?" It's hard to think over his growling stomach. His mom has strict rules about him not eating while he drives; his recent appeal on account of being a werewolf, with way better reflexes than before, hasn't moved her. 

"Derek and Isaac. Neither one of them seems to have anyone else. If they were gay, then maybe they could have each other."

"I think they _do_ have each other," Scott says, checking the mirrors so he doesn't have to look at his mom. "Just not like…that."

"Hmmm." She sounds dissatisfied. She pops the last of the hash browns into her mouth. "Though, maybe it is for the best. Isaac's your age, right? And Derek's…what? Almost thirty?"

"I don't know," Scott says, not quite a lie. Fortunately or unfortunately, his mom doesn't seem to really need his help to keep the conversation going. 

"Yeah, that's no good." His mom taps a finger against her upper lip. "What Derek really needs is some friends his own age. I know he's the alpha wolf or whatever, but he spends way too much time around you kids."

"Derek—" Scott starts, and then stalls, not sure what he's wants to say. Is he really going to defend Derek to his mom? Does he even want to? "Derek's okay," Scott finishes, feeling obscurely guilty. 

"Still." His mom shakes her head. "Can't have been through everything he's been through and be completely normal. And you just _know_ he's never had therapy."

Scott glances sideways. "You don't even believe in therapy!"

"Mmmm, nuh-uh." She holds up a finger in objection. "I said we didn't need therapy just because your dad left. And we didn't!" She spreads her hands. "We're doing okay, aren't we, the whole, 'my son is a werewolf' thing aside?"

Scott snorts. "Yeah, Mom. We're great."

"Damn right!' She nods. "But the kind of stuff you and Stiles have told me about Derek? _That's_ the kind of thing you need therapy for. That's the sort of thing why therapy was invented."

"Maybe," Scott says noncommittally, pulling up to the curb. "I gotta rush, though, if I'm going to shower and make it to school on time." He throws the car into park and hands off the keys, then grabs the McDonald's bag and plants a kiss on his mom's cheek. "Love you."

"Love you, too." She yawns and waves, slower to gather herself and get out of the car than Scott. "Don't wake me when you leave."

☽ ☾ 

_We need to have a conversation._

Derek snorts and thumbs his phone's screen off. Peter's not the Alpha anymore but you wouldn't know it, the way he demands Derek's time and attention. Not that Derek has any intention of obliging him. 

The guy at the end of the hallway—Derek's age, green cap, tall and skinny with one of those bellies that looks like a basketball's shoved up under his shirt—has been eyeballing Derek since he got out of the shower, though he hasn't yet worked up the nerve to make his play, the rusty scent of loneliness and longing sweating from his skin.

"Hey, uh, are you, uh…"

"No." Derek lifts his eyes from his phone to glare. Of all the places in and around Beacon Hills that they can shower, the Petro truck stop in Corning is Derek's favorite; it's clean, lots of really hot water, and the food is good and comes in trucker size portions. Fewer people here assume he and Isaac are looking to give quick blow jobs for a couple bucks, too. 

_Fewer_ people. 

"I'm not. And he's not, either," Derek says firmly when Isaac finally comes out of his cubicle, wet and flushed from the steam and Green Cap turns toward him. Going _anywhere_ with Isaac is dicey; he was built to be propositioned, by men and women alike. 

Derek takes hold of Isaac by the back of his neck, herding him past the guy, giving one last _fuck off_ look for good measure. 

"You know, you don't have to do that," Isaac says, once they're outside. He squints in the sunlight, but makes no move to pull out his sunglasses, lashes fluttering against the brightness. 

Derek blinks, looks back toward the truck stop. "Did you want to go with that guy?" Isaac hasn't shown much interest—sexual interest—in anyone that Derek's ever seen, even when Erica was flirting hardest with him and Boyd, fishing to see who'd bite first. 

"No." Isaac shakes his head. "I don't…" Isaac looks off toward the pumps, only the slight acidic shift in his scent to tell Derek it's not accidental. "I've been hit on by guys before." 

Derek snorts. "Color me unsurprised."

Isaac's face turns toward Derek sharply, that naked shock he can't seem to hide, after everything his father did to him, everything he's been through. Isaac has no poker face, a fact as astonishing to Derek as it's incomprehensible. 

"I have eyes," Derek says, which makes Isaac turn pink and his pulse stutter. "I know what you look like," Derek clarifies, wonder-worrying that they're getting back onto some weird ground that he'd rather avoid. It'd been hard enough convincing Erica that, no, he really was not going to fuck her. "And I see how people look at you."

He also sees how Isaac reacts to it, the heavy layers of clothes he no longer _needs_ to wear—especially in this heat wave—but does. Derek scruffs the jawline edge of his beard with his nails, the thing that had let him turn that corner from 'pretty boy' that no one took very seriously to…whatever he is now. 

Derek shrugs. "People look at me, too. I've been hit on by guys before. I remember…" The pool of those memories lies there in front of him, but Derek's not about to go swimming in it. He shrugs again. "I know what it's like. Pretty."

Isaac tilts his head, considering, before he looks away again. "Anyway. The point is," Isaac says, throat working around all the things he's not letting himself say. "I can take care of myself." 

"I know you can," Derek agrees. Isaac was fully capable of taking care of himself even before Derek gave him the bite. Isaac has been taking care of himself for years. It's not a question of capability. Derek keys the car open. "It's not about that."

Though he and Isaac smell considerably better for showering, the interior of the Toyota does not. The acrid new-car smell is definitely gone but Derek isn't sure the ghost of Scott's spunk (and his) is actually an improvement. Derek's freshly washed skin tingles as he climbs in.

"Then what's it about?" Isaac buckles himself in.

Derek starts the SUV. "I'm the Alpha," he says.

☽ ☾ 

"I have the sneaking suspicion you're avoiding me."

"I avoid you whenever possible," Derek says, letting Peter hear the absolute truth in his voice. At the other end of the train car, Isaac looks at Derek; Derek nods toward the car's door: _go away for a while._

Peter makes his dumb, fake, _my feelings are hurt_ face before he runs a finger down the train car wall like he's doing a white-glove inspection. He shifts his nail, letting it screech against the metal in a way he knows sets Derek's teeth on edge. "Hmm," he tuts, holding the collected filth out to Derek like Derek—or Peter—gives a fuck. 

"What do you want?" Derek asks. He puts his gas-station receipt bookmark between the pages of his book and tosses it aside. It's a library book, the only reason he doesn't throw it at Peter's head. 

"We used to be such close friends," Peter says regretfully, swiping his palm across the seat opposite Derek before he condescends to sit down. "What happened to us?"

"You killed Laura." Derek leans his head back against the window. "You tried to kill me. And I killed you. Be grateful it was just the one time. What do you want?"

"I thought we should talk." Peter laces his fingers together and then lets them fall between his knees. "Boyd and Erica are dead."

"They're not dead," Derek insists. "I would know if they were dead." The pack bonds, his strength, his abilities, they would've changed. He would feel it, he would know.

Wouldn't he?

"I can think of a dozen reasons of the top of my head why that's not true," Peter counters blandly. "But even if we say, for the sake of argument, that it is true, they're not coming back."

"You don't know that—"

Peter lunges to the edge of the seat, planting his hands on the edge of Derek's bench. His talons puncture the pleather as his eyes flash blue. "I _do_ know that!" Peter growls, voice deepening over the words. "If they left on their own—and we both know by now, they didn't—then they're gone. And if Deucalion has them, they're dead anyway, whether they're dead _now_ or not." 

"Bullshit!" Derek slides forward, too, hackling at Peter—too close, too mouthy, too defiant, disrespectful. He grabs Peter by the throat, fingers flexing in the urge to crush or maybe rip.

"What's bullshit, nephew, is your refusal to deal with what's in front of you," Peter says, his voice gurgly and his face slowly flushing dark, brick red, but otherwise unaffected by the fact that Derek's only millimeters from strangling him. "You're the goddamn Alpha."

Derek roars, shoving Peter away. Peter slams into the opposite wall and slides down to the bench again, one leg going down to check himself from slipping all the way to the floor. Peter dips his chin, not quite bowing his head, but avoiding direct eye contact with Derek, and chafes the fading marks on his neck. "You wanted to be the Alpha," Peter pants, a little breathless.

"I _am_ the Alpha."

"Then act like it."

"What is it you think I'm not doing?" It doesn't help that Peter sounds just like the voices already in Derek's head, tallying his fears, his failures, the endless comparisons to Laura, to his mother. He's not good enough to lick their muzzles, let alone follow in their footsteps. "You have a brilliant idea about what to do next, tell me!" Derek throws his hands out. "I'm listening."

"Stop wasting your time on Boyd and Erica." Peter leans forward again, though he doesn't cross the aisle this time. "You need to think about what's good for the pack, not just those two."

"And what's that?"

Peter clicks his tongue and looks disappointed but Derek's pretty much immune to Peter's disappointment at this point; it's such a constant and completely outweighed by Derek's own. "Expansion."

Derek takes a breath, lets it out. "No."

"If we're going to have any chance at all against Deucalion—"

"No."

The thought of bringing more people into this, exposing more people to the flaming disaster movie that is his life, giving more people up as hostages to his shitty bad fortune….

Peter's jaw squares, though his voice stays cool, oily, persuasive, "I've already got someone, I've been feeling her out, if you offered her the bite…"

_"No."_ Derek puts the power of the Alpha into his voice, since it's all Peter will respect. The momentary flash of his eyes is like an itch; it's an effort not to blink and dilute the effect. "We're not abandoning the pack we already have and we're not bringing anyone else in. If you don't like it—"

Peter opens his mouth, but Derek gets there first. "If you don't like it, go find another pack…assuming any other pack will have you."

Despite his reservations about keeping Peter around, Derek's never said the words—never dared say them—but Peter did say one thing Derek can't ignore. He's the Alpha, he needs to act like it. And that means making sure Peter knows his place. 

_He won't leave. He won't. He's got nowhere else to go._

"Or maybe you want to be an omega?" Derek moves to the edge of the bench, eyebrows arching. "No pack at all, all on your own?" Derek tilts his head, eyes narrowing. "But…you're still not at your full strength, are you, after your miraculous resurrection?" Derek strokes his chin thoughtfully. "In fact, you're still pretty…oh, what's the word? Oh, yeah. _Weak._ "

Peter gets so still that, if Derek wasn't looking right at him, he wouldn't know Peter was there. 

"Don't push me," Derek warns. " _Don't_ go…chasing anyone, to bring them into the pack. And get the hell out of my sight."

For a moment, Peter holds that statue-immobile pose. Then, with an audible inhalation and a drop of his shoulders, he gets to his feet, the careless, charming mask back in place. "Well," Peter says. "That was certainly as Alpha-ish as anyone could've wanted. Your mom would be…so proud." The lazy smile he gives Derek goes nowhere near his eyes, cold and bitter as a timber wolf's. 

"Just go," Derek says, exhausted again, resuming his lean against the car wall. 

"Just so I have it clear," Peter says, when he's standing in the door of the car, because Peter can't ever let anyone else have the last word, "you mean 'except Scott'."

"What?" Derek snaps, then mentally thwaps himself, guilty of playing into Peter's hands yet again.

"You said you're not bringing anyone else into the pack." Peter says, gesturing. "But I assume you mean no one except Scott. I assume, you see, because his, ah, _scent_ is all over you and that's the only reason I could think of that a strong Alpha like you would let himself be marked up by a beta like Scott. That… _is_ the reason, right, Derek?"

Derek shuts his eyes, shuts Peter out, though not before he sees Peter's smile widen in satisfaction. 

_Peter's nose is so good, he can smell a secret_ , his dad used to say, and Derek remembers the hard flat tone of it, understands now, in a way he didn't then, that it's not admiring, not a compliment.

☽ ☾ 

Scott is sleeping, dreaming, and then, suddenly, he's not.

He sits up in the bed with the sudden awareness that he's not alone in his bedroom. He's not scared, he's not in danger. Just…not alone.

_Familiar._

_Friend._

_Derek._

His nose gives him a direction to look before his eyes adjust enough to pick Derek's blacker shape out of the darkness. Derek is sprawled in his desk chair, gripping the rests like he's worried about gravity reversing on him.

"What…" Scott shakes his head, hoping to rattle some sense in, digs in his heels and pushes more upright. "What're you doing here?"

Derek leans forward, elbows on his knees. "Is this a one-way street, Scott?"

"What?" Scott looks at the clock. It's late. Or early, depending. Derek's picking now to play riddle games? 

Derek gets up in a creak of plastic and vinyl, coming to the foot of Scott's bed. He's looming, there's definite looming going on there, but Scott doesn't find it as scary as it used to be, despite the hollow, fluttery feeling in his gut. 

"Are you the only one who gets to ask for sex?"

Scott's eyes dart to the door in seizing panic, as though the sound of the word spoken aloud in his bedroom will summon his mom. 

"She's at work," Derek says, something Scott would know, if his brain was working right. Scott nods, dragging his fingers through his hair, trying to get it together. Derek makes a noise, too short for Scott to identify. "Scott?"

Scott looks back to Derek. His eyes have adjusted and he's more awake, better able to see and feel the tension in Derek. It reminds him of Jackson, ready to blow up at any second, into motion, into a rage.

It's been over a week since the full moon; it's both sooner and later than Scott thought he'd hear from Derek again and none of those thoughts had been like this, caught off-guard in his bedroom, with Derek doing the asking. 

"I don't want to talk about it," Derek says, voice just as taut as the rest of him. "Just a yes or no." 

For a moment, as he'd been waking up, Scott had thought it was Allison in the room with him, Allison that had climbed through his open window, Allison, back, again. He can't help the disappointment, that it isn't…but the sourness of it in the back of his throat doesn't seem to affect the anticipatory, jittery heat flooding the rest of his skin. He's not wearing anything but his boxers and Derek's fully clothed. It should make Scott feel vulnerable, nervous, but it just feels dirty in a good way, an _oh, yeah, gonna get laid_ , way. 

"Yeah," Scott says, before he can over-think it. His mouth feels dry even though it's flooded with spit. Already his cock aches, a deep itchy-good throb begging for Scott's—or somebody's—hand closed around it. Scott pushes back the blankets back, leaving his legs and a big swath of the bed bare. 

The 'y' is barely out of Scott's mouth before Derek is stripping his shirt over his head, a whisper of fabric and the strengthening of Derek's scent, and it hits Scott again: this is really going to happen. It's happening right now.

Derek skins out of his clothes so fast it's like Scott blinks and then _cock_. Derek's weight dimples the mattress and Scott tries to decide if he should lie back or reach for Derek or what. He would think he's done this enough by now that it should be easier, he should be smoother, but, as Derek crawls to straddle over Scott's legs, Scott doesn't feel smooth at all. 

Derek's hand curves around Scott's waist, urgent but not painful…and then Derek sits back on his heels and sighs. "You can say no, Scott."

"I don't want to say no." Scott shakes his head. He might feel out of his depth, he's _completely_ unsure about what's going on with the two of them, but he does want this. "It's just…" He puts his hands on Derek's thighs, bristling the hairs with his thumbs. "I haven't done this a lot." Scott shrugs, swallowing past the awkward tightness of his throat.

Derek pauses and then he makes a short, snorting laugh, putting both hands on Scott's waist and easing him onto his back. Scott goes with it. "It's just sex, Scott," he murmurs, nosing at Scott's neck, his jaw line. Derek's tongue circles Scott's ear, dips inside in a way that makes Scott jerk. Derek's fingers are hooked into the waist of Scott's shorts.

"Yeah," Scott agrees, lifting up to let Derek tug his underwear down. As soon as his boxers are gone, Derek's there, his hands pushing Scott's thighs apart, wide apart. 

Scott curls up to see what Derek's going to do, but at the first hot, wet brush of Derek's tongue behind his nuts, he flops back, a noise wringing out of him like he's never heard himself make before. 

It's humiliating and _loud_ , Jesus, and Scott claps a hand over his mouth. Derek doesn't even stop what he's doing, licking and scenting and God only knows what else; he just reaches up without looking and grabs Scott's wrist and pulls his hand away. 

_Make noise_ , or maybe, Scott thinks with a full-body shiver, _I want to hear you._

Derek pushes closer, shoulders shoving at the back of Scott's thighs, kilting him up, and Derek's tongue goes back, _way_ back, in a place that no tongue has ever been before and Scott is reasonably confident that no tongue is supposed to go. 

_"Derek!"_ Scott's body snaps taut, but Derek just exerts a little more of his Alpha strength and Scott doesn't actually go anywhere…not that he's trying to, exactly. Scott's fingers skim over Derek's hair but he's unsure about the reaction he'd get to actually grabbing, so he snatches at the sheets instead.

"Shhh," Derek says, without moving his face, which adds another type of sensation to what's already almost overwhelming. Derek's thumbs stroke that inside curve of Scott's ass cheeks where his tongue just was and it's soft, almost gentle, like he's trying to soothe Scott in this _completely weird way_ , and then his thumbs spread Scott open even wider and his tongue is there again. 

It doesn't even feel bad. If Scott could just get past the weirdness of Derek's _tongue_ in his _ass_ , it actually feels really, really, oh, God, _really_ good. 

Scott's hands slide on the sheets, wanting to hold onto something, something more—better—than the cloth, but there just isn't anything, just his fingers opening and closing helplessly with every flick and flicker of Derek's tongue. 

And…okay. Okay. Scott can go with this. He can totally go with this. He's making noises, all these whimpery, sobbing noises he's afraid will wake his neighbors, but it's good, it's really good, and God, he's never going to be able to tell anyone about this. 

Then Derek touches him. That is, Scott becomes aware that the circling pressure on his…on him, is not Derek's tongue, it's his finger. 

"Oh, hey, whoa, whoa!" Scott almost sprains something scrambling backward. Derek sits back on his heels, wiping his mouth with the back of his arm. "I didn't…" Scott doesn't know what the end of that sentence is. _I didn't expect that. I didn't agree to that. I didn't want that._

Of course, if you'd asked him about a tongue in his ass, he wouldn't have said yes to that either. Would a finger—up there, _in_ there—be that different? Would he go even further, let Derek put his dick in him, fuck him? In his _ass_?

It's too much, too fast. 

"I don't…want to do that," Scott says slowly. 

Derek coils, like he's going to go leaping off the bed and Scott leans close enough to grab Derek's wrist. "Is that okay? I'm all right with the other stuff, pretty much _all_ the other stuff," Scott's cock hasn't even softened, "I just don't want to do…that."

Derek's tendons flex in Scott's, like he's toying with jerking away, running away, anyway. Then Derek lets out a tense, shuddering breath. "Yeah. Okay."

He doesn't move, though. 

Scott edges nearer, slides his grip up Derek's arm, wrist to elbow, bicep to shoulder. The muscles are so tight. Scott digs his thumb into them, like he does for his mom after an especially rough night and…no. Not going to think about his mom. But Scott massages Derek's arm until it's not so taut, not so clenched. Then he pulls Derek closer. 

No kissing, nope, not with where Derek's mouth's been, but Scott nuzzles at Derek's jawline, near his ear, smelling himself on Derek's skin, new and musky and older; not just come, but sweat and tears, their skin mingling. Scott's noticed a change in his own smell, little but there; Derek is the mirror image of that, more Derek, less Scott, but different than before. 

Derek's fingers touch Scott's sides, streak down his ribs, tentative at first, but Scott isn't pulling away and after a second, Derek gets surer, thumbing down Scott's belly until he finally takes hold of Scott's cock, jerking him in slow, delicious pulses. 

Scott sighs his approval against Derek's neck, scratching his teeth over the ridge of Derek's shoulder. He traces down Derek's body, looking for his dick, looking to return the favor, but Derek pushes Scott's hand away. 

"Wait," Derek says, before Scott can have a feeling about it. "Not like that. Come here."

Derek stretches out across the bed. It's the first time Scott's really seen Derek fully naked, though it's too dark in the room to really _look_. Scott's a little surprised at how much he wants to look. 

Scott stretches over Derek's body to turn the lamp on to its lowest setting, a hazy golden glow not too harsh to wolf eyes used to the dark. 

When Scott moves to draw back, Derek says, "No," and tugs at Scott's leg, encouraging him to straddle Derek's waist. Which is fine until Scott settles his weight and realizes that puts Derek's thick, very hard, dick right there, where he's been licked open and is still really _very_ sensitive.

Scott pops back up on his knees, but Derek grabs his hips, holding him there. "I won't," Derek promises, his thumbs making circles over the bone. "Not inside, I won't, I promise." 

It's more convincing if you don't listen to the breathlessness of his voice, the way Scott feels Derek trembling, tiny urgent shaking, against the inside of his thighs, his calves, but Scott lets Derek ease him down again. When Derek's dick touches his skin again, Scott's hips jerk and roll like they have a mind of their own, tingles shooting through his body like stars as he lets Derek wedge himself there, between his legs. 

Scott gets a little lost, rocking on Derek, feeling what it feels like, a cock right there up against his asshole, but he comes back when Derek takes hold of his cock, tight-wrapped fingers stroking and squeezing in time to the shift of Scott's weight. 

_"Fuck,"_ Scott breathes, bracing himself on Derek's chest, solid and warm under his palms. With each thing Derek does to him, he thinks it can't get any better, any more intense, and then another layer peels back and Scott's losing it again.

Scott closes his eyes, grinding himself down on Derek's dick and then forward into Derek's fingers, feeling in his hands each shiver and hitch of breath that Derek makes in response, rolling up into Scott. 

"Come on me," Derek says, when Scott starts rocking faster. Derek moves the hand that was squeezing Scott's thigh to grab Scott's nuts, rolling them between his fingers in a way that makes everything better, more urgent. "I want you to." 

Scott doesn't just picture it—the hot splatter of his come against the golden brown of Derek's skin—he _feels_ it, the ball-emptying pleasure of it, the brutal, electric jolt through his cock. More than that, he wants it: that feeling, to see Derek covered in his jizz. 

Scott opens his eyes and moans jaggedly, his hips jerking hard and pistoning his cock harder into the circle Derek's made around him. He comes, a long, breathless fall where even his hearing whites out, and then he's spurting out on Derek, thick stripes and puddles all over that smooth tan skin. 

At the touch of the first droplets touching his skin, Derek's eyes clench shut and his head snaps back, hands shifting to Scott's hips, using them to hold as he drives up between Scott's legs over and over. 

Each time his dick head or shaft brushes Scott's asshole, it's another shockwave, tingling all the way through to Scott's dick which has shot itself completely dry, though it keeps trying. 

"Scott—" Derek's voice is strained, choked, a trembling urgency in every line of his undulating body. Scott doesn't need any of his werewolf senses to see—know—how badly Derek wants to come. And that he can't.

Scott pushes his fingers into the wet, cooling mess on Derek's chest, smearing it, rubbing it in, painting all Derek's unmarked skin with it. Derek cries out and his nails bite sharper into Scott's skin as he pushes up more desperately between Scott's thighs. 

Scott slides his hand up Derek's convulsing throat, fully expecting to be bitten when he daubs his sticky fingers over Derek's lips, inside, rubbing off back and forth over Derek's tongue as Derek opens his mouth wider to let Scott deeper.

Derek comes, Scott's bones creaking with the force of Derek's hands dragging at him, a hot bloom of wetness between Scott's legs, in his crack. Scott's gut twists, his spent dick trying to come again. 

"Oh, God." Scott breathes out, a long, unsteady exhalation as he braces himself over Derek. He's never done _anything_ like that before. He's never even thought about doing anything like that before. 

Derek doesn't say anything, panting like he's run a marathon and pretty literally covered in Scott's spunk. 

For a while, that's all there is. 

Then, realizing he's in real and actual danger of passing out, right there where he is on top of Derek, Scott straightens up. The gesture pulls in some seriously intimate places and Scott further realizes he's in danger of ending up _glued_ to Derek. Carefully, delicately, he lifts up, lets himself fall sideways to the mattress. Just stretching his legs out is awesome.

"I have to get up around five to go get my mom from work," Scott says. "If you want to stay until then…"

"No," Derek says. Almost as soon as Scott's off of him, he sits up, swings his legs off the bed. "I'm going."

It's a relief, just a little bit; Scott isn't sure he wants Derek to stay, though of course it's the polite thing to offer. The polite thing to say, "You don't have to go. Or, or, if you wanted to shower…?"

Derek is already most of the way in his clothes. Scott's skin crawls at the thought of putting any kind of cloth next to his skin and Derek's in worse shape than he is. But Derek's also moving with the kind of jerky rapidness like he's either late for something or he can't wait to get the hell out of there. "Nah, I'm good," Derek says. 

"You got what you came for?" Scott's surprised at how bitter it sounds, coming out of his mouth. He doesn't feel like he's bitter about it…isn't the whole point that _it's just sex, Scott_?

"Something like that," Derek says. "That a problem?"

"Nope," Scott denies. "Not for me."

Derek stares at him for a few seconds, like he's trying to X-Ray Vision something out of Scott, but mostly, Scott just wants to roll over and go back to sleep at this point. He can't even bring himself to care about the kind of clean up he's going to have in the morning, or that he's going to have to wash the sheets and probably Febreeze the mattress too, without his mom finding out. 

"Then I guess I'll see you around," Derek says, shrugging into his tee-shirt last of all and going to the window. 

"Okay." Scott yawns, fumbles without looking for the lamp switch, immersing the room in solid and soothing darkness. Derek climbs out the window, easing the screen down after himself. 

Scott's mostly asleep before he hears Derek's weight leave the roof, so he's pretty sure the quiet "Thanks," he sorta, kinda, cloudily remembers later on was just a dream.

☽ ☾ 

"You look tired," Dr. Deaton observes, when they finally slow down enough that they can take a break. "Summer vacation getting you down?" He tilts his bag of chips in Scott's direction.

"Not much of a vacation," Scott says, fishing a few Doritos out of the bag. "Still got school, work…not," he corrects hastily as Deaton raises his eyebrows, "that I don't love my job. But I've just been busy, trying to fix all the stuff that got messed up last year…"

"Because of the bite," Deaton finishes, nodding.

"Yeah." Scott tosses his chips in his mouth. "And I just…I want to be better, you know? This all happened to me and I was freaked out about it for so long—"

"It's a pretty freaky thing to happen to a young man," Deaton says, offering Scott the bag again. Scott waves him off. 

"Yeah, sure," Scott agrees, shrugging. "But this all had to have happened for a reason, right? I mean…there's no going back, this is what I am now. Gotta figure out how to…not just deal with it, live with it, but make the most of it. Be the best at it that I can."

Deaton smiles. "I'm sure you will be, Scott, you're well on your way." He puts his hand on Scott's shoulder for a second, squeezes. "I just don't want to see you trying so hard to be good for everyone else that you forget to take care of yourself. A balance needs to be struck."

"No, I know," Scott agrees. "I'm okay. I'm not…overwhelmed. I just didn't get a lot of sleep last night," he says, hoping his face doesn't look as hot as it feels. 

"Oh." Deaton's eyebrows arch. "I didn't know you were seeing someone new." He crumples up the bag and tosses it overhand at the trashcan across the room, two points, no net. 

Scott hadn't planned on telling Deaton about his break-up with Allison, except that apparently anyone within two feet of him could tell that he and Allison had broken up, despite Scott's efforts to put a good face on all of it. 

"I'm not," Scott denies quickly, running his palms down the outside of his legs. "Seeing anyone." His basic sense of honesty and Deaton's eyebrows ticking even higher prompt Scott to clarify, "Not…it's not…dating." Scott clears his throat, straightens up from his lean against the counter. "I'm not dating anyone," he says finally, definitively. 

Deaton holds up his hands and looks at Scott the same way he looks at Lacey Milstrom's cat, Snuggles, so ornery, he needs to be heavily sedated before he can even be examined. Scott will admit he flailed a bit there, but he doesn't think he earned that look. 

"I wasn't trying to pry," Deaton says and now he's _talking_ to Scott like he's Snuggles, too, that low, soothing, _don't bite me_ murmur. "You've just been pretty down, this last couple months. It's nice you're moving on." Deaton's mouth flexes, like his smile got away from him. "Even if it's not…dating."

Oh, God. "I'm not," Scott says again. "Moving on, I mean. Allison…" There's the familiar squeeze around his heart, just at the sound of her name, at the empty space where she used to be, and though he feels increasingly pathetic that he keeps saying these same words, making these same excuses, he has to keep saying them anyway, like a ball player wearing the same lucky socks all season or Rafael Nadal, tugging on his face and junk before every serve. He hasn't given up. It can't sound like he's given up, because he hasn't. Wolves mate for life, don't they? 

Scott takes a breath. "Someday Allison and I will be together again," he says, and it sounds calm, solid, totally solid. "I just have to wait, and be patient."

Deaton is looking at him again. Not the Snuggles look this time, but the look that every adult-type person has given him when he talks about Allison's and his future, that annoying _Oh, honey, you're still too young to know what you want,_ look. Scott is so sick of the idea that just being sixteen somehow equals too stupid to live. 

Deaton inhales like he's going to say something and Scott's ready, he's ready to throw all of it back in Deaton's face, because he knows, he fucking _knows_ what he wants and it's not going to change. But what Deaton says is: "I just don't think that planning for your future means you should neglect—or feel guilty about—the life you have right now." He smudges the neon-orange Dorito dust on his fingers together before going over to the sink. 

"You and Allison didn't work out right now because of the people you are. And that's okay," Deaton says, glancing at Scott, interrupting the protest Scott was about to make. He pumps the wall dispenser for soap. "But if the two of you are going to find each other again, you—both of you—will have to change, change into the people who _can_ make it work. And you'll never do that by standing still in the same place."

"But if we're both moving, how do we find each other again?" Scott flinches from the sound of his own voice, every whining insecurity he's been trying to bury naked and obvious. And it's just a metaphor, anyway. 

Deaton washes his hands briskly then straightens, tugging paper towels from the dispenser. "If it's really meant to be, Scott, you just will," Deaton says, drying his hands. "It's like a dance. Or…like lacrosse." He balls up the paper towels and takes a jump shot at the trash. The little ball wobbles on the can's rim, but eventually flutters in.

"How so?"

"You can learn the timing, you can learn the plays, but when it comes time to pass the ball, either the other person is there, where they're supposed to be, or they aren't. You take care of you, you do your part and trust that, when the time comes, the other person will be there." 

That sounds, to Scott, suspiciously like what his mother did—and look how that turned out—but Scott nods anyway. "I'm going to take the trash out before the next appointment," he says, because he needs some air and Deaton, who knows damn well that Scott never takes the trash out until last thing, as he's leaving the clinic for the night, just nods. 

"Okay, Scott."

☽ ☾ 

This is something Derek's never told anyone: he actually really likes doing laundry.

He liked it when he was a little kid, too small to even reach the tops of the machines, their controls. Before he knew enough to just jump up, he'd open the dryer door and use the lip to boost himself. He'd sit on the washer through the spin cycles and curl up on the dryer and let its heat soak into his bones. 

His uncle—not Peter—had taught him how to make laundry detergent, without all the chemicals and stinkum that went into the stuff sold in the store; he'd taught Derek how to get grass and blood and grease out of clothes, how to treat them so they last longer. 

Since the fire, he's done his laundry in a series of Laundromats much like this one. Nose-strippingly awful with the chemical reek of all the detergents and bleach and softeners but always warm and always with other people around, and he doesn't have to talk to any of them, which is the best of both worlds. Every Laundromat is pretty much like every other one, too, so, in a way that goes with the rest of his fucked-up life, it's the closest thing he's had to continuity since everything went to shit. 

Derek drops the old hotel pillowcases in which he bags his clothes and puts both hands on the edge of the washer, the detergent-corroded edge digging into his palms as he breathes harder than necessary. 

(Laundromats were—are—also good for panic attacks. Though they don't happen as often as they used to, as often as right after the fire)

Derek breathes deep, lets the chemicals burn in his nostrils, scour out all other scents. That's the other thing he likes about doing laundry: the way it washes away all the old smells, all the stains. The illusion of starting over, of new beginnings. 

Of course, there are no new beginnings and there are always new stains, new tears and holes until the garment is unwearable, but Derek always manages to forget that part. Or maybe he's gotten good at forgetting that part and just remembering the part he wants to, the part that feels good. 

Derek picks up the pillowcase and chucks the entire thing in the washer. He'd been planning to do laundry anyway, but it had shifted from _should-do_ to _**must** -do_ when he realized that all his clothes smell like Scott. 

His entire body smells like Scott, despite several hours spent swimming laps in the pool at the Y and then a long, hot shower afterward. Derek isn't sure which bothers him more: that it doesn't bother him as much as it should or that he's trying to scrub himself clean just so Peter won't have it to use against him. 

He still doesn't even know why he went to Scott's. It'd seemed so important at the time, the feeling like he was going to come out of his skin and that going to Scott's—to Scott—would be faster, easier than going through the dance of trying to hook up with a stranger in the wee hours of the morning. He told himself that there's no reason Scott should be the only one getting something out of this.

And all of those reasons have their elements of truth. But if he takes the time to sniff out the bigger truth, it's that he went because he wanted to. He has sex with Scott because he wants to. And he asked Scott to come on him because he wanted that, too. 

Derek realizes that, while he's busy daydreaming, he's rubbing up and down along his belly. He makes a disgusted noise and turns to Isaac's clothes, bagged in a more traditional striped canvas sack from his father's house. Isaac, unlike Derek, hates doing laundry and despite his worries about the Alpha Pack wandering around, Derek's just as glad to have the time to himself, without the weight of a beta at his side. 

Scott might think Derek's a piece of shit, but Derek's got a lot more experience at that than he does at being Alpha, a skin that fits better, like his aunt's stories about the first shifters. 

Derek sorts Isaac's clothes, cataloguing which ones need some kind of stain treatment (also DIY) before they go in the wash. As a rule, Isaac's an insanely clean kid—more byproducts of his father, Derek's sure, and not in a good way—but he's also living rougher than he used to and it's taking its toll on both their wardrobes. 

Derek's up to his elbows in suds and Isaac's might-be-coffee-might-be-blood stains when his phone buzzes in his front pocket. Worried it could be Isaac, that there could be trouble, Derek shakes his hands out then fishes it out. Text message from Scott. Derek snorts and almost puts his cell away again. Instead, he thumbs the message open. 

_Come by tonite?_

Derek's breath puffs out of him as though it was a sucker punch, rather than some words on a screen. 

All his life, he's been around people who either knew or just didn't know. Those who knew, the pack, they all _knew_ , and nothing ever had to be explained to them and those who didn't know, everyone else, they were never supposed to know and only silence—his silence—was required. 

Until Paige, it was never a problem for him; Derek had no desire to throw open the doors between those worlds. And after Paige, for a long time, at least, he had even less. 

And then Peter brought Scott crashing into Derek's world, somewhat literally. And like the disastrous comet that he is, Scott brought all these others in on his tail. And _none of them_ know. Not even the ones that most need to. Like Boyd, like Erica. Like Isaac. And Scott. 

When Stiles had cornered him, he'd told Stiles the truth: that things are different—sex is different—because Scott is also a werewolf. The thing is, Scott himself doesn't have enough sexual experience period, and definitely not enough sexual experience with other wolves to know the differences, himself. To know why Derek shouldn't ask for Scott to come on him, why he shouldn't want it, to be marked and by a lesser wolf. 

Hell, Scott probably just thinks Derek's fucking _kinky_. 

It makes Derek laugh, the thought, a choking little gasp of a laugh. Yeah. Derek is kinky, all right.

Though maybe that's why this is; why he's fucking around with Scott in the first place. If Scott doesn't know, then Derek's free to ask for—and get—whatever he wants. And even if Scott does know, if he found out or figured it out, the fact that Derek is a shitty Alpha is no news to him. 

_Yeah, ok,_ Derek types back, like it's no big deal, like he can't still feel each hot pulse from Scott's dick on his skin, Scott's fingers pushing into his mouth. He's glad all over again that Isaac's not with him; he probably smells like an animal in heat. He's actually considering going into the laundry bathroom and jerking off…couldn't make it smell any worse than it does already.

☽ ☾ 

Scott's known Stiles for most of his life. He is Scott's best friend, his main dude, his brother from another mother. He is the smartest, most creative, most interesting, most loyal, _best_ person that Scott has ever known.

…and sometimes he just gets on Scott's every last nerve. 

It's not really Stiles' fault this time around. He showed up at the clinic after Scott got off, big grin, and the first two Transformer movies in hand in preparation for _Dark of the Moon_ coming out this weekend. 

And if Scott didn't already feel like crap, it would've been fine. Or even if Scott hadn't texted Derek because he feels like crap, then it would've been fine, because Stiles probably would've dragged Scott out of his bad mood, because that's what Stiles does. In the words of Stiles himself, there is no resisting The Stiles. 

In fact, by the time he sneaks into the kitchen—under the excuse of microwaving more popcorn and refilling his drink—to text Derek and tell him not to come until later, he's feeling well enough that he's thinking maybe he should just tell Derek not to come at all.

That's the sane thing, right? To hang out with his best friend. To watch stupid action movies (actually, Scott has a secret soft spot for the Transformer movies and Stiles totally knows that) and eat junk food and…be normal. This is his chance to be normal. Maybe only for a little while, before the next crisis comes along, but that's all the more reason to enjoy it now, while he can. 

The microwave beeps, startling Scott out of his head. He leaves his phone on the counter and grabs the popcorn bowl, tipping the burnt and unpopped kernels and crumby fragments into the trash.

On the other hand, he thinks, hauling out the new bag and pulling the sides apart to release the fragrant steam, isn't having as much sex as he possibly can, while he can, _exactly_ what normal sixteen-year olds do? 

He wants Derek to come over. He managed to avoid thinking about Derek most of the day, but after texting Derek, he can't get it out of his mind. He gets a semi every time he thinks about it. He wants Derek to come. 

Just not while Stiles is here.

"What is _taking_ so long?" Stiles walks up and reaches past Scott to fish a handful of kernels out of the bag. "You just missed the Autobots wrecking Sam's house. If you miss Hoover Dam, too, I…" Stiles manages to shrug and throw his hands in the air at the same time. "I will have to _seriously_ reconsider the terms of our friendship, because you're not the man I knew."

"I'm coming," Scott says, a small smile curving across his lips. "I just got…sidetracked."

Stiles makes a face, taking the bag from Scott's loose grip and upending it over the bowl. "You've been sidetracked all night."

Scott shrugs. "I'm just tired." He opens the fridge door and stares, seeing nothing there he wants. He hadn't specified a time and Derek hadn't asked. Realistically, he could show up any time. If Stiles is still here, will Derek come in anyway or will he decide Scott's blowing him off and leave? And of those two, which is the worst option? 

He imagines the three of them mashed together uncomfortably on the couch together, watching _Revenge of the Fallen_ , imagines the pissy look on Derek's face— _and_ Stiles'—and has to choke back a laugh. 

"I was thinking about maybe hitting the sack early," Scott says, grabbing a bottle of water. He lets the fridge door close and puts his back to it, cracking the cap open. 

"What? No!" Stiles had thrown a piece of popcorn into the air to catch; when his head jerks upright, it bounces off his forehead. "We can't watch _Transformers_ and _not_ watch _Revenge of the Fallen_. It's like jerking off and not taking the money shot!"

Scott splutters water; all over the bottle, all down his front. "Dammit, Stiles!"

"Speaking of money shots…" Stiles giggles and has to put the popcorn bowl down on the counter, next to Scott's phone. 

Stiles' nosiness is as much a part of him as the moles on his face; Scott can tell the moment Stiles glances at Scott's phone and sees the half composed message to Derek, the lines of his body lengthening, stiffening, his scent going metallic and stale at the same time. 

"Yeah, you're right," Scott says, grabbing his phone. He finishes the message with _til after 1230_ , werewolf quick, and hits **SEND** before shoving the cell back in his pocket. "It's not the same if we don't watch both."

Scott moves toward the couch, but Stiles doesn't move with him, still standing by the island, both hands planted knuckle down on the countertop like he's thinking about punching it. 

Scott sighs. "Stiles—"

"No, wait," Stiles says, holding up a hand without looking at Scott. "Just…wait." He pushes the air toward Scott. "Let me just say this."

Stiles breathes out noisily, frustrated, a sigh, and then looks up at Scott, brown eyes boring deep. "I get that you're still messed up about Allison. I get that you're in the dark place right now. And…that's okay. You can be screwed up and in the dark place. For a while. And if…" Stiles mouth twists. "If banging Derek Hale for a while is what you need to do, to feel better, or feel worse or whatever it is he's making you feel…" Stiles pushes off the counter and raises his hands in surrender. "Fine. I think it's _gross_ , and terminally stupid…" 

Scott makes a noise of protest, but Stiles holds up his hand again.

"But it beats taking up cutting, or listening to sad, emo music in the dark, so okay." Stiles shrugs and he stops looking like he's trying to drill a hole through Scott with just his eyes. 

"Okay?" Scott repeats.

"Yeah, okay." Stiles shrugs again, his scent more metallic, hotter. "Nothing I say seems to make any difference…"

"Hey," Scott protests inadequately.

"…it's something you _clearly_ need to get out of your system, so…" Stiles spreads his hands, "do what you need to do."

Scott wants to say something. He knows the things he's supposed to say, the things you're _supposed to say_ when you're in a situation like this, but when he tries to put them on his tongue, they taste bad, wrong, like that time his mom hadn't realized that the hamburger had just gone bad and made spaghetti with it. 

"You know, you could've just said, that you had plans," Stiles says quietly, turning the popcorn bowl around and around on the counter. 

"Yeah, but…" Scott gestures, "Transformers. Besides, no one can resist The Stiles."

He can tell Stiles doesn't want to smile, but it washes across his face anyway, his fingers combing idly through the popcorn in the bowl. "Anyway," he says, "I'll just grab my movies and go. I don't want to interrupt your _booty call_ or anything."

"No, don't." Scott jerks his head in the direction of the family room, resolutely ignoring how hot his face and neck get. "We haven't seen Hoover Dam yet. And then you can't watch _Transformers_ without watching _Revenge of the Fallen_."

Stiles points a finger at him. "This is true."

☽ ☾ 

The lights are off all over Scott's house when Derek gets there, except for the dim glow from the kitchen, where they always leave the hood light on overnight. Even the porch light is off, not that Derek expected anything different.

Scott's second message said not to come until after twelve-thirty because Stiles was there but, by the time Derek rolls up—after parking in the lot of a 24-hour Walmart a half-mile away, because he doesn't know how nosy Scott's neighbors are, and walking the rest—it's actually much closer to one forty-five. 

When Derek edges across the roof to just outside Scott's window, he can hear Scott's heartbeat and steady breath. He can tell that Scott's not sleeping. 

Still—and with the awareness that super-hearing goes both ways and Scott can undoubtedly hear Derek crouched on his roof tiles—Derek hesitates, hand half lifted without knocking on the glass. What the hell is he doing? 

He doesn't get much time to freak out about it, though, because Scott opens the window from the inside. "You came this far," Scott says. His expression doesn't look like anything at all, not happy to see Derek, not pissed. His vocal tone's the same, bland as paper. "You going to hang out out here, or are you coming in?"

Derek breathes out and slithers through the window. He wants to be here. He just doesn't think he _should_ want to. 

"You know, I wasn't sure you were going to actually show up." Scott retreats to sit on the edge of his bed, his fingers gripping the mattress.

"I said I would."

"Yeah, hours ago."

"I wasn't the one that changed the time."

"I…" Scott sighs and scrapes his hair back. "…don't want to fight about this."

"What if I want to fight?"

Scott pauses and Derek reaches out with his senses, trying to feel which way it'll go, but Scott just tilts his head. " _Do_ you want to fight?"

Derek's hands snap shut, blunt, unshifted nails biting into the skin, his throat tight and hot. 

"Derek…"

"Right." Derek toes out of his shoes, grabs the back of his shirt to tug it over his head. "That's fine. We can just get to it."

"I…wait." Scott slaps his hand over Derek's as Derek goes for the button on his jeans. "I didn't mean it like that."

Derek bites back hard on the ugly surge of rage, though he has to jerk his fingers out from under Scott's and take a step back to do it, so his heels bark into the wall and the screen bows and screeches a little at impact with his ass.

Scott puts his elbows on his knees and stares at Derek. Derek gropes for some clue, sensory or visual, to tell him what that stare means, what lies behind it, but Scott isn't giving him enough to work with, more like Peter in this respect than Isaac, who wears his every feeling out where people can see it. Even his scent is even-keeled, more the products on his skin and hair than the guy under them.

Then Scott sighs. "Fine. We can do it your way." He crosses his arms and shucks his shirt over his head, letting it slide from his arms and droop to the floor. 

Derek is aware that he's failed yet another test of understanding, of communication, of intent, but knowing he screwed up isn't the same as knowing why. It's just a feeling, all over the surface of his skin like static electricity, crackly and itchy at the same time as they strip out of their clothes, leaving them in piles. 

It lasts until Scott swings his legs up onto the bed and Derek climbs onto the mattress next to him. Derek puts his hand on Scott's thigh, warm and knotty with hidden muscle, slides up to Scott's waist and then he's pulling Scott in. Scott scoots across easily, willingly, touching Derek back and no tension in his body other than the want that seeps from his skin, that makes his cock harden against Derek's. 

It's a shock, even as he lets Scott coax his mouth open; Scott isn't angry, Derek can't feel any coiled punishment waiting for him in Scott's limbs, there's nothing in his scent but want, clean and uncomplicated by cross-currents of anything else, anything darker. Scott puts his leg over Derek's hip, flexing his calf to bring Derek closer and…that's all. Just Scott's leg holding Derek there and Scott rutting his hips slowly, cock sliding between their kissing bellies. Scott's arm is around him and touching the triskele on his back, tracing and exploring each of its arms by skin difference alone, and it's gentle, almost tickling, his nails boy-jagged, but unshifted.

"What?" Scott pulls back a little and Derek realizes he's let his mouth go slack, passive, dropping out of the kiss in every way except presence. Scott glances down at the join of them, cocks and stomachs, meshing legs, and then back at Derek. "I do something wrong?"

Derek doesn't know how to answer that, how to explain that what's wrong is _him_ , unable to cope or even grasp the idea that Scott isn't pissed at him after all that, that this isn't the set up for something else, something punitive. 

"No," Derek says, mainly to get past it, though it's also the truth. He works his hand between them to grab Scott's dick, squeezing down at the base. Scott's mouth opens on a short, hurt noise and his eyes drift shut, hips jerking toward Derek.

Not every person he's ever fucked has hurt him or messed with his head in the course of sex. That would be breaking the odds, even for him. But the ones that were around long enough to stick out, Kate and Nichos and even Valentina, in her tearful, wounded way….yeah. And Derek knows. You can't have Kate Argent on that list and not know, on some level, how screwed up it all is. How screwed up he is.

It's a different kind of knowing, realizing how deep that expectation of pain, of punishment, goes, so deep that he feels confused and adrift without it. 

"Okay, _stop_." Scott's fingers close over Derek's and Derek realizes he's lost down a dark road again. Scott's eyebrows hook down toward his nose and his expression hovers somewhere between confused and irritated.

_Oh,_ Derek thinks, _here it comes._

"Do you even want to be doing this?" Scott asks. "I mean…to quote your own words back at you, you can say 'no', Derek." 

Derek thought laughing is the last thing he feels like doing, but it skitters out of him anyway, surprising him with its easiness. And, as if the act of it ejects something from inside him, the awkwardness and uneasiness melt back, leaving just the warmth of being here, naked, with Scott. 

"I want this," Derek says, taking Scott's fingers and curling them around his own dick. He's only semi-hard, but when Scott touches him, when his grip tightens, he twitches and starts to get stiff. 

But even as Scott's fingers play with him, Scott's not entirely appeased. "Is it…? Is this because I wouldn't let you…" Scott takes a breath and visibly steels himself. "Is it because I didn't let you fuck me in the ass?"

"No." Now Derek pulls back, levering up on his elbow. "That's not it at all."

Maybe this is the punishment. But if so, is it Scott doing it or is Derek inflicting this on himself? 

"Okay, but then, what?" Scott isn't stroking him anymore, but his thumb moves back and forth across the exposed ridge, dragging on Derek's foreskin. Derek isn't sure Scott knows he's doing it. Derek's finding it hard to think about anything else. 

Which may turn out to be a blessing, because, without the distraction of Scott caressing him, Derek doesn't know if he'd ever work himself up to say, "Would you ever think about doing it the other way?"

He can't keep looking at Scott looking at him and their scents are all mixed up in each other, so when the silence falls, Derek feels it like a weight, like a hand on the back of his neck, on the top of his head, pressing down.

"You mean… Like…me, in _your_ ass?" Scott sounds like he's tasting the words out, like a food he's never had before and isn't sure he likes. 

"Yeah, Scott," Derek makes himself say, "that's what I mean."

Derek wonders if this is something Scott will know after all, by instinct, or something Peter told him, that Alphas, _real_ Alphas, don't take it up the ass...not from a lower wolf, preferably not by anyone at all.

He remembers Nichos: "You'll never be an Alpha, Derek. Never. You don't have the strength, the power. You let yourself be mounted and fucked, which is bad enough. But I can tell you like it."

Scott's thumb wanders down the shaft, an oddly thoughtful gesture, like tapping his fingers on a table. "Is…that something you…want?"

Derek's throat is dry, so dry and hollow. Too much to be able to snap, _why do you think I asked?_ , so Derek just grits out an arid, "Yeah."

And all the time, Scott just keeps up that slow, teasing back and forth with his thumb along Derek's shaft. 

"Don't tell me you haven't thought about it." Derek tries to make it sound mocking, careless, but he's pretty sure he fails at that as badly as he's screwed up everything else today. 

Scott laughs, though. And not a _Derek, you stupid fuck_ laugh, but startled, maybe even a little shaky. "I really haven't," he says and yeah, Derek can hear the vibration in Scott's voice now. "I haven't thought about _any_ of this."

Suddenly, Derek's a little shaky himself. Despite his words to Stiles, he forgets sometimes, how _humanly_ young Scott is, still so tangled up in human life, human concerns, human insecurity. 

"Forget it," Derek says. He pulls Scott's hand off his dick, starts sliding himself out from under Scott.

"Wait…I didn't say no!" Scott sits up, grabs Derek's arms, midway between wrist and elbow. "I didn't say _no_ ," Scott insists. "Why does everything have to be so damn black and white with you? I mean…" He huffs. "Could I have two freaking seconds to decide if I'm cool with _yet another_ sex act I've never done?" 

"I shouldn't have asked." Derek shakes his head. 

Scott sighs, fingers tightening over Derek's skin. "I don't mind you asked. I mind that, because I didn't immediately say 'yeah, okay!' that the entire thing is suddenly over. Don't I get a say, too? I mean…" Scott's skin darkens, pouring through his face and neck, down his shoulders and chest. His scent goes spicy and musky at the same time. "I was really looking forward to…sucking you again." He lets go of Derek long enough to slap a hand over his blushing face. "Oh, God, that sounds dumb."

It doesn't sound dumb, but Derek isn't sure how to express that to Scott without sounding like an idiot himself, so he waits it out. 

Finally, Scott lets his hand fall, shoulders slumping, too. "I just want to think about it. Okay? Not _no_ , just…later. Like a raincheck."

Derek snorts, he can't help it. Scott is just so fucking…earnest. Derek doesn't ever remember being like this, even before. 

It seems to be growing on him, though.

☽ ☾ 

"Isn't that Derek?"

Scott manages to somehow both trip over the shopping cart and drive it into an aisle display, knocking cookware loudly all over the concrete floor. "Yes," Scott calls over his shoulder, chasing a rolling lid into the candy and gum aisle.

It pinwheels under one of the pallets of merchandise and by the time Scott manages to (literally) claw it out from underneath, Derek and Isaac are helping his mom put the rest of the display back together. 

"Thanks," Scott says. His breathlessness is totally due to chasing the pot lid. Totally. "Hey."

It has nothing at all to do with the hours he just spent on the internet looking up gay porn. 

"Hey." Isaac nods at Scott and Scott isn't sure if the awkwardness of his smile is for Scott himself or because his mom is standing right there with her best _isn't this lovely_ grin on her face. 

Derek, of course, doesn't say anything. He looks about as awkward as Scott feels, but that's also pretty much his normal face. 

"What are you doing here?"

"Shopping." 

The _duh_ tone of Derek's voice, the lift of his eyebrow as he glances down at his cart and then back at Scott is familiar, but it's weird too, because this used to be their everyday kind of interaction, their _only_ kind of interaction, and now there's this whole subterranean otherness to it. Of knowing what Derek looks like naked. What he looks like, coming. What he tastes like. 

He looks at Derek and thinks, _He wants me to fuck him_.

Before his mom had corralled him for the monthly Costco trip, Scott had managed to score a couple hours where he hadn't had to be anywhere or do anything—aided in part by the fact that Stiles had apparently been up all night and was currently sleeping the day away. He'd spent that time doing…research. All the research that X-tube and Tumblr had to offer.

Research that is now exploding in his head, in living color and THX sound, now that the reason for it is standing in front of him. 

"You must be Isaac," Scott's mom says into the silence, holding out her hand. "I'm Scott's mom, Melissa."

Scott snaps out of his X-rated mental paralysis. "Oh, right, sorry. Mom, this is Isaac, and you know Derek…"

"I don't think we've ever officially met," his mom says, a sharpness to her voice and smile that makes Scott cringe a little as she extends her hand to Derek. "I'm Melissa McCall. Scott's mom."

"Mom. He knows that," Scott sighs, as Derek shakes his mom's hand with all the enthusiasm of a wolf sticking his paw in a trap. Which…yeah. 

"You know, it's funny," his mom says, tugging at a trailing curl of hair, winding it around her finger, "you find out that there are such things as werewolves, and they're right here in Beacon Hills!" She laughs brightly. "And then you run into them at the Costco and you realize how much stranger your life can get!"

"Mom!" How is this his life? Why is this his life? He makes a pained _I'm sorry,_ face at Isaac and Derek.

"Though, I guess it makes sense," his mom goes on, "I know how much it takes to keep Scott fed these days, I guess with the two of you, it's probably even more expensive." She looks down into Derek's cart. "Oh. Except it doesn't seem like you're doing much food shopping at all."

"We don't have a lot of room for food storage at our place," Derek explains with a smoothness that leaves Scott a little open-mouthed in shock. "And we don't cook much."

"Huh, neither do we," his mom admits, with a brief laugh. "But I do a damn good spaghetti, which stretches pretty far. You boys should come over for dinner some night."

Scott chokes a little but no one looks at or consults him, which is pretty normal for how these things go. "Mom," he says forcefully, into the expectant silence, "we should hurry, if we're going to get back in time for you to go to work."

"Oh, we've got plenty of time," his mother says, waving her hand at him like she's shooing a fly. 

"It's a very nice offer…" Derek says.

"Oh, no," his mom says, crossing her arms and legs and squinting up at Derek in a way Scott knows all too well. She shakes her head at Derek. "Don't do that, don't just blow it off. Look, we're in each other's lives now. And with all the terrible stuff…" She sighs. 

"Well. If we can band together for all the horrible things that happen, it won't hurt us to do something nice together. Share a meal." She spreads her hands, face softening. "You're Scott's friends. I'd like the chance to know you, _as_ Scott's friends, and not just…these people who show up sometimes, when I'm scared out of my gourd and things are terrible. Okay?" 

"Okay."

Scott grabs onto the cart because he needs something to hold him up when Derek agrees. Agrees quietly and without a growl or glare. Scott and Isaac trade what are probably identical glances before carefully looking in opposite directions. 

"Great!" His mom smiles hugely and bounces forward on her toes, reaching as if she's going to grab Derek's shoulder in her excitement. Sees, too, the moment she thinks better of it, rocking back onto her heels and letting her arm fall back to her side. After everything else, it barely pings Scott's embarrassment meter. "That's great! How's tomorrow night? I know that's soon," she rolls her eyes, " _really_ soon, but I'm a nurse and that's my night off and I won't have another one again, for…" She counts up on her fingers. "Well. A while."

Derek shakes his head. How is he the calmest one? "Tomorrow night's fine."

"Great! With my schedule, we tend to eat pretty late. Is nine too late?"

"It's fine."

Scott is sure that part of it is having his mother standing right next to him, but he can't connect the guy in front of him with those gifs and clips of moaning, gasping men getting deep-dicked on the internet. It's not just that he can't imagine pushing his cock into Derek, he can't imagine Derek actually wanting it, asking for it. He can't connect it with the red-eyed guy who'd stood over the corpse of his uncle and growled, "I'm the Alpha now."

_Does_ Derek really want this from him, or is this just another mindfuck? Another time that Scott thinks they're actually getting somewhere, only for Derek to turn on him? It's a squirmier and even less pleasant prospect than ever, a thick, sour knot in the bottom of his stomach. 

"Okay." His mom nods at Derek and Isaac. Then the moment breaks, like a bubble, the rest of the Costco coming back into focus around them. Scott starts to breathe again. 

"We really do need to finish up our shopping, though," his mom says apologetically, and Scott quickly wheels the cart around to point in the right direction. "I guess we'll see you later!"

"Later," Derek says. His gaze flicks to Scott when he says it, growl and promise, and _holy shit_ , it's like a punch low in his gut, the way Scott's vision shifts and his entire body remembers what it was like, having Derek's cock in his mouth _just this morning._

"L-later," Scott stammers, with every cell in his body willing himself not to blush. He wheels around and pushes the cart up the aisle.

"What are you _doing_?" Scott hears Isaac mutter, as they go in their differing directions.

"You were awful quiet with your friends," Scott's mom observes, shouldering him aside and taking over pushing the cart when he's apparently not moving fast enough for her. 

"Getting along," Derek says back, his shrug as obvious in his voice as if Scott was looking at him. Scott almost trips over his feet a second time today, only werewolf reflexes keeping him from taking a header. 

"Usually, you and Stiles, I can't shut the two of you up," his mom continues, picking up a net bag of avocados and giving each of them a brief squeeze to test ripeness.

"I think you did the talking for both of us, Mom," Scott says wryly. 

She glances up at him. "You're not mad that I asked them over, are you?"

"No." Scott glances back over his shoulder, but Derek and Isaac have moved out of the central aisle, out of sight. He's aware, though, that Derek could hear him, if he was listening. He's aware Derek might be listening. Though, it doesn't make change his answer, if Derek is. "A head's up would've been nice," he elbows her in the side and she _oofs_ theatrically, "but I'm glad you did."

"You know you don't have to wait for me to extend an invite, right?" She puts the avocados back on the pile regretfully and picks up a ten pound bag of potatoes instead, heaving it into the cart. "Your friends are welcome at the house whenever." 

It's weird, to hear her call Derek and Isaac his friends, to put them in that same category that's mainly only ever been occupied by Stiles…but he guesses that's what they are now. "I know, Mom." He leans in and kisses her temple. "Thanks."

☽ ☾ 

_Hey, sorry I wasn't around today._

_NBD. Had to go to Costco w/my mom anyway._

_Exciting!_

_More than you'd think. Isaac & Derek were there._

_…. Srsly?_

_IKR?_

_Is he there now?_

_Who? Derek? No. Why?_

But Scott knows why, even before he expands his senses to hear the brisk rasp of Stiles' Jeep pulling up to the curb. Scott quickly closes about a dozen tabs on his browser, erases _and_ shreds his entire internet history and clears his cache and cookies before slamming the lid shut and bounding out of the room and down the stairs to be at the front door by the time Stiles climbs out of the car. 

"Hey," Scott says, like his heart isn't leaping a million miles a minute in his chest and he hadn't been thinking about rubbing one out just a couple minutes ago. 

"Hey." Coming up the sidewalk, Stiles makes a little salute with three fingers and grins. "So…he's basically a homeless person…but he's got a Costco membership? How does that work?"

Scott grins back. "Yeah, I don't know. But get this—my mom invited him and Isaac to dinner."

"Shut the front door!" Stiles stops dead at the foot of the stairs. "Seriously?"

Scott nods. "Yeah. Tomorrow night."

"Oh. My. God, I so need to be here for that!" Stiles flings himself to his knees in front of Scott, hands clasped in front of his chin and working the Bambi eyes for all they're worth. "Please, please, _please_ tell me that I'm invited to dinner."

"You're _not_ …but why do I think that doesn't make a difference?" Scott leans against the door frame, crossing his arms. 

"Because you know I have a key?" Stiles asks, scrambling back to his feet and dusting off his jeans. "And the mind of a criminal genius?" 

"A criminal, anyway."

"Hey, I resemble that remark!"

As amusing—and sort of comfortable—as it is to think of having Stiles there, Scott gets why it would be horrifying, too, especially with what Stiles knows about Scott and Derek. He won't be able to help himself; it's just Stiles' nature. 

He'll hint and allude (another new word in Scott's vocabulary, though not from the Word of the Day program) and crack really inappropriate jokes and Isaac will be there and Scott's mom, and it'll be bad, really bad. 

Just when things are going sort of good. 

"Look," Scott says, once they've gotten inside and Stiles is rummaging through the fridge. "Don't take this the wrong way, but…"

"No," Stiles says, leaning back to look at Scott from around the refrigerator door. " _No,_ " he groans, letting the door fall shut. "Aw, c'mon, Scott, you've gotta let me come."

"I just don't think it's a good idea." Scott runs his finger over an old knife scar in the countertop.

"What if I promise I'll be on my best behavior?"

Scott looks up from the scratch, staring Stiles down.

"Okay, fine," Stiles says, shoulders slumping as he sighs deeply, "but I'd _try._ "

"Yeah," Scott says, drawing the word out, "no."

"I don't think you get how _terminally boring_ this summer has been so far, or you'd take pity on me." 

"I can't believe you'd say that. I thought 'boring' was supposed to be the whole point behind this summer. I thought you'd had enough exciting."

Stiles scoffs, waving a hand at Scott. "Okay, but I was talking about the people getting turned into lizard-monsters and coming back from the dead and getting killed kind of excitement." Both Stiles' hands make an X in front of him. "I am _totally_ done with that kind of exciting. But watching Derek try and fail to act like a semi-normal human being in front of your mom? So, so different." Stiles smooches his fingers.

"…and that is exactly why you can't be there." This past year, it's the most he's ever said _no_ to Stiles, after years and years of following Stiles' lead wherever it's taken them. Stiles has always been the smarter one, more creative, more inventive. The one who comes up with the best games, the best adventures. Stiles is still all those things, but, thanks to the bite, a part of Scott exists in a different world than Stiles and that means walking his own way more often than he ever has. 

Doesn't make it any easier, though, or make Scott like it any better.

"I mean it." Scott makes himself meet Stiles gaze, ignoring the tightness in his chest. "I mean, yeah, it's probably going to be awkward as hell and I'll give you all the dirt, later on, but…it's important. Me and Derek and Isaac, even the stuff with my mom. You know how…" Scott waves his hands, "she's been. I'm trying real hard to make it all work."

"No, yeah, I know." Stiles' voice is calm, but his body language isn't, his scent is harsh in Scott's nose, like the burning dust smell when the furnace first kicks on in winter. 

"It's just…you and Derek…"

"No, yeah, of course…"

"…I mean, it's not like you guys hate each other, but…"

"…yeah, but it's still…I mean, I still don't trust him, but I don't _hate_ him…"

"…yeah, so, you know, I just don't want it to be a thing. I need it to _not_ be a thing…"

"I totally get that! And yeah, fine, okay, I know I set him off…"

"…and my _mom_ is going to be there, dude! Like, I just…and you know you'd say something…"

"No, I get it, I totally get it. It _sucks_! But I get it."

"Yeah, so…" Scott looks down and notices that, while he wasn't paying attention, his nail shifted and what was a little scratch in the counter is now a gouge. Great. "Are we…?"

Stiles sighs, but it's the deep exaggerated one. "Yeah, we're good." 

Scott breathes, a little lightheaded as the bands across his chest spang loose. "Okay, good. Good."

Stiles turns back to the refrigerator. "Why do you guys never have anything good to drink? What is this, even?" He pulls a pitcher out and eyeballs it skeptically. "It looks like jizz."

"It's horchata," Scott sighs, rolling his eyes. "Which is the same thing I tell you _every time_ you ask. Which is a lot, by the way."

"Because you always have something in your fridge that looks like jizz." Stiles looks down at it and his grin widens. "Bet you've been drinking a lot of this lately, huh?"

Scott facepalms. "Oh, my God, shut up. You're sick."

"So…does this mean you and Derek are, like, dating now?" Stiles puts the horchata down on the counter and gets a glass from the cupboard. "Is this something serious?"

"What?" Scott scrunches up his face. "No! I don't…where did that even come from?"

Stiles shrugs, pouring himself a glass of horchata. "Dinner with the family. Seems like the kind of thing you do when you're getting serious, right?"

"I… _no_. I mean, yes, that's a thing you do, but no, that's not…it's not. We're not." Scott shakes his head, as if he can rattle the thought out his ear like water. "Why do you keep doing that?"

"What?" 

"You keep making it sound like I'm falling in love with Derek, or that I'm going to fall in love with Derek and…" Scott shrugs. "It's just really annoying, okay? Knock it off."

Stiles opens his mouth and Scott's not sure what he's going to say, a denial or a defense or something else totally, but he can tell the moment where Stiles changes his mind. "Yeah, okay, fine," Stiles says, then tosses his head back and drains the glass of horchata in three big gulps. "Hey, that's not half bad," he says, before letting out an enormous belch. "Doesn't taste like jizz at all."

Scott laughs. "I'm not even gonna ask."

Stiles gives him a look, one eyebrow arched. "Don't front; you know you've tasted your own spunk."

☽ ☾ 

As expected, Stiles stays over, but he falls asleep on the downstairs couch, meaning Scott has his room to himself and, now, some time to think about all the porn he looked at today.

The thing is, Scott doesn't really like porn all that much. He's looked at it, watched it, jerked off to it—especially when he first hit puberty, man, he jerked off a _lot_ —but so much of it is just so…ugly. And fake. And kind of gross.

It probably says something about equality that gay porn doesn't seem to be any different; a lot of really fugly dudes, grunting and moaning with unnatural, metronome regularity while jamming their cocks at each other, casually brutal and so…impersonal. Like none of these people met each other before they were fucking each other and even then, they don't like each other very much. No connection. No spark.

If there's one thing you can say about him and Derek, nothing is impersonal; nothing is _ever_ impersonal. 

Derek's not ugly, either, though Scott's coming to appreciate that much differently—more intimately—than before. 

He's also quiet. Derek's quiet all the time—all the time he's not yelling, anyway—but it's even more noticeable when Scott's doing something to him that feels good; stifled and bitten off, like Derek's afraid of being overheard (something Scott relates to all too well) or maybe even like Derek's ashamed to admit that something happening to him actually does feel good. 

Which… _oh_. That's sparked some interest south of the border. Scott spreads his fingers over his cock, just touching it, feeling it get harder but not holding it or rubbing. He wonders what kind of noise Derek would make if Scott said yes, if he pushed his cock into Derek; he wonders what it would feel like, if would feel anything like it did with Allison or if it would be different in a way he can't even imagine.

Not all the porn had been completely horrible. Some of the stuff from Sean Cody, Corbin Fischer, those guys had looked like they were friends, like they were having fun, like having some guy's cock up your ass is a pretty awesome thing to do, like it's something they just do, from time to time, in between everything else. 

He knows what Stiles didn't say to him downstairs; that he thinks Scott is too romantic, that he gets too attached. Stiles thinks Scott's going to fall in love. 

But Scott's already in love. It hasn't changed because Allison's gone, because she's not with him right now. In his heart of hearts, he knows: it's never going to change. And to hell with what anyone thinks. 

But him and Derek… He doesn't want to love Derek. He just wants to like him a little more, wants Derek to like him a little more…and maybe keep having sex for a while, because that's turned out to be pretty good, pretty nice, and it stops him from _hurting_ so much all the time. 

His senses pulled in—and mostly focused on his dick—Scott only feels it a couple seconds before Derek's weight lands on the roof; he's at the window before Scott rolls out of bed and goes to lift the sash. 

"Hey," Scott starts to say, concerned and surprised and surprisingly pleased that Derek's here. He starts to say _is everything okay?_ but it all gets swallowed up in Derek's hands on his face and Derek's mouth crashing down on his, like he's trying to eat Scott's face and suck his soul out through his mouth all at the same time. 

"You don't have to fuck me," Derek says, the words twisting over one another so it takes a mental replay for Scott to makes sense of them. Derek eels in through the window, still holding Scott's face between his hands as he does, pushing Scott backward. There's nothing quiet about him now, restless energy pouring off his skin like heat as he kisses Scott again, hard and biting. "I just want…I just want to fuck. Can we…?" His hand goes between Scott's legs so easy, familiar, slipping under the waistband to take hold of Scott's dick, already half-hard and making a run for rock-hard as he licks blood from his bottom lip. "I just want to fuck."

"Stiles," Scott says, more because he feels he has to than because it's a serious protest.

"Sleeping," Derek counters against Scott's throat. The hot blurt of Derek's breath on his jaw, his neck, makes Scott shiver. "I won't wake him if you don't." Derek bites down.

Aw, _fuck_.

They don't even try to move to the bed, kneeling on the floor. Scott strips out of his boxers, the only thing he's got on, but Derek just peels his jeans and underwear down his thighs, pushing their cocks together with a soft, satisfied noise as he sucks short-lived bruises into Scott's skin. 

The continuous pulse, between hurting and healing over and over again, is a thrum in Scott's blood; he puts an arm around Derek's neck and one around his waist, holding him close at those two points of contact: _Don't stop_. 

Derek's greedy, frantic, his mouth and free hand all over Scott, his other clutched in tight friction around their dicks, not gentle, slick with mingled precome. God, so slick. Scott was all ready to get off on his own; Derek's fast, brutal rub on his cock pushes Scott in no time to feel just as hungry, as desperate, scenting and tasting across Derek's skin how much he wants this, how close Derek is to coming already, just from this.

When Scott's fingers slip down to cup both cheeks of Derek's ass, hold and squeeze, it's not planned, it's not intentional. Scott just wants them closer, as close as they can get, skin to skin, bone on bone, but he feels/smells/senses the shift when Scott's hands close and drag; a microsecond of Derek stiffening and then, without actually changing anything or moving a muscle, Derek becomes still in Scott's arms, a weirdly perfect tension of singing tension and an equal softness. Pliant, that's the word.

Waiting, Scott realizes, the thought struggling to surface through the pleasure of Derek's thumb grinding into the nerves just under the head of Scott's cock. Derek's waiting. Waiting for Scott. 

"Derek—"

"You don't have to," Derek says quickly, like he was waiting for that, too. 

"No, I know," Scott says, calmer than he thought he'd feel now that they're at this moment. Other than the tense ache of his cock, tightening his balls. He flexes his fingers again, such taut muscle, but so much give to it. He brushes along the crease and Derek makes another of his quiet, choked noises against Scott's throat, panting hotly, shivering. 

"Scott—"

"Shhh. Just…shut up, okay?" He squeezes Derek again, getting soft noise and an answering flex of Derek's fingers on their cocks. "Let me…" Scott doesn't know how to end that sentence, all his brain on a different channel than the one with the words, all his focus on the slow, stroking movement of his fingers into that hot cleft. "Let me."

Derek shudders again, harder than before, but he doesn't say anything, burying his face deeper into Scott's shoulder. Letting Scott.

The power of that, that Derek Hale is giving him this, letting Scott play and explore with his body—Derek Hale—is almost as good as the rub of Derek's cock on his. No, not almost; it _is_ as good, in a way Scott can't quite grasp right now, can't put his finger on. 

Scott's breath hitches, his whole chest hitches, when he thinks about where his fingers are, pulling Derek wide with one hand so he can find and touch and trace around that tight-furled pucker. Derek's asshole. His hole. 

Derek presses his mouth all over Scott's jaw and neck and shoulder, kisses and bites and sucks, or sometimes just muffling himself, when Scott rubs in a way that makes Derek jolt and his dick twitch and blurt more precome. 

The more Scott touches him, the more he rubs, he feels Derek's hole start to gape, to open under the pressure of his fingers. Derek's shaking all over, continuously, and Scott starts to think about it, about the possibility of _in_. 

Already rocking to the same steady, easy rhythm as Derek, the thought of it—of shoving his finger deep in, in feeling what there is to feel and how it feels, seeing if it'll feel as good to Derek as to all those guys in those pictures and videos—makes Scott crash hard into Derek, ravenous and drowning in it. 

"I want…" Scott circles that loosening gap. He wants to know what noise Derek will make then, whether it'll be loud or low, growling or moaning. Wonders if all of the above is a valid possibility. "Can I…?" He dips in without even waiting for permission, heat and plush, lush give, hard muscled softness. 

"Yes." It's almost too soft for even Scott to hear, just a wet hiss against his collarbone and Derek's hips shifting back, trying to take Scott further. "F-fuck. Yes. _Yes._ "

_Oh, God._ Scott's blood rushes loudly through his ears…but not so loudly he can't hear the sound Derek makes when Scott drives his finger deeper into him, a groan that Scott can feel all the way to his bones, a groan that makes him think of—and worry about—Stiles, still asleep downstairs. 

But it's only a fleeting thought, barely a thought at all, because what he's really thinking about is what it's going to feel like, when it's more than his finger. When it's…

A thousand pinpoint prickles break out across Scott's skin, the opposite of goosebumps and hot instead of cold, sweeping him like a sickness as his heart kicks into overdrive. 

"I'm gonna…" Scott swallows against the sudden dryness of his throat, the deep, bone-deep ache. He ducks his face to rub along Derek's cheek, the bristle of Derek's beard along his jaw reminding him this is real, grounding him. "Next time." He noses along Derek's jaw, voice failing as his throat closes around the words. Against Derek's ear, he whispers, "I want to put my dick in you. Next time…"

Derek grunts, harsh, punched out, and his whole body seizes up taut. Come splatters against Scott's chest, stomach, all on his pubes, hot on his skin, bitter in his nostrils. And familiar, so familiar now. Scott's nuts feel half-crushed with how much he wants to be there with Derek, how much _he_ needs to come.

He pushes Derek back, to the floor, and Derek just goes, letting himself fall, letting Scott pin him there with one hand. Derek looks up at Scott, his eyes dark but not guarded, not walled up. He should look ridiculous, clothes only half-off, splashed in his own come. All Scott can think is how he wants to strip Derek naked and rub himself all over Derek's body, cover Derek with him, sweat and spunk and stink.

Scott's cock is soaked with their combined fluid, slick, silky slide through his fingers. Fingers that were just in Derek. Inside him. He jerks himself roughly, breath rasping so hard in his lungs it sounds like he's growling. 

Derek stares up at him, expressionless other than those raw-naked eyes, and then his body goes soft under Scott, pliant, arching his head so the long part of his neck is open, bare. _Go ahead; do whatever._

Scott whines deep in his throat, _soclose_. "I'm going to fuck you," he says, gasping, almost choking on the words. He fucks into his hand harder, the wood creaking under his knees. "I'm gonna, _oh, God,_ I'm going to…to fuck you…"

The first spurt from Scott's cock jets all the way to Derek's jaw, thick and ropy. Scott aims lower, pushes his cock up against Derek's softening dick, smearing and wringing himself out on the shaft, pubes, Derek's balls and lower. Derek bites his bottom lip, hips bucking up, cock giving one last hard twitch. 

Scott lets go of his cock to thumb the cooling spunk from Derek's cheek; like they rehearsed it, Derek turns his face to meet Scott, mouth already opening to take Scott's fingers in. 

Scott lets Derek lick and suck his hand clean, collapsing sideways to the floor without ever taking his gaze away from Derek's lips, the pink of his tongue, the bob of his throat with each swallow. Derek's eyes are closed and he looks so relaxed, almost blissful, as he works. Scott thinks, _I did that._

It feels good, knowing that, a warm, sweet flush like when booze was something he could feel. _I did that,_ he thinks again. And: _Derek let me do that._

But when his fingers are clean and the spit and spooge are cold on his skin, Scott realizes he doesn't know what comes next. 

He'd like to jump in the shower, but he's not sure that Derek wouldn't disappear in the meantime and Scott isn't quite at the place where he's ready for that vaguely bored, "See ya," and see the disinterested shutters to go back down over Derek's eyes. Not after his first real peek at what's behind it. 

"I thought you hated me," Scott says, sliding his hands over Derek's chest and abs where his shirt's ridden up, under the pretext of wiping the last of Derek's saliva away. Though he pitches his voice low, too low for a non-werewolf, it still sounds loud after the silence. "For a long time, I thought you hated me."

"I don't hate you, Scott." Derek's eyes slit open and he turns his head to look at Scott. If he's less raw than he was five minutes ago, he's also still not ratcheted back up to the defensiveness of Defcon 1. Derek sits up, but it's just to slide his jeans and underwear down to his ankles where he can kick them off. Derek peels his shirt over his head, dropping it on top and then lies back, tucking his arm under his head. 

"Yeah, I know," Scott says, scraping up a smile because that admission cut surprisingly close to the tender bone. "You let a guy put his…hand…in your… _in_ ," Scott waves his hand vaguely at Derek's now-naked body, hot all over again but for a different reason. "If you hated me…" Scott breathes a laugh, "I wouldn't still have a hand."

Derek snorts and then smirks, though it feels like a different smirk than usual, not a weapon Derek's bludgeoning him with. Derek's leg sweeps sideways, kicking Scott in the knee without any force behind it. Scott curls his fingers around Derek's ankle, just holding it. 

"You know I've never done this before," Scott asks quickly, before he can chicken out. "Not with a guy. Not…"

"I know," Derek says, flexing his leg in Scott's grip without pulling away, like he's testing how tightly Scott's holding him. "You don't… I'm not expecting you to follow through on something you said while fucking." His hand lifts from the floor and flops back. 

"No, I want to!" Scott says and yeah, could he sound more eager-beaver about it? But he does. Even spent, the thought of fucking Derek fills him with a tingling, butterfly-ish anticipation. If Stiles wasn't downstairs, if he didn't have to pick his mom up in just a few hours…

And that's hard enough to get past, without having to go all MTV-confessional at the same time, but he knows he'll never have the balls to ask for it, if Derek backs out now. Rubbing his thumb over the rough circle of Derek's ankle and watching every move like he's defusing a bomb, Scott repeats. "I want to. I… I've been thinking about it all day and I wasn't sure, but then when we were… I just knew. I want to, I really want to." He peeks a look at Derek from under his lashes. "Unless you, you don't want…"

"No, I still want you to," Derek says quietly. He's not looking at Scott either, looking down the length of his own body, so his eyes seem mostly shut. "I want…" He sighs and arches his head back on his neck, closing his eyes for real. "I really want that," Derek says, flat, like it hurts him to say it.

Scott inhales deeply, sharply. So that's it, then. They're really going to do it. It's going to happen. 

Derek rolls his head toward Scott and opens his eyes. "You're not going to go and get a bunch of Glade candles and some soft R&B and try and create a 'mood', are you?"

Scott laughs and the fizzing, butterfly feeling settles, making him feel less like he's going to throw up. "Nah. You look more like a power ballad guy, anyway."

Derek snorts, his lips still soft, smiling; a smile that goes all the way to his eyes as he rolls them toward the ceiling. "I don't…I don't want some big romantic thing, is all I mean. This. This isn't romantic."

"No," Scott agrees, stroking against the lie of Derek's leg hair, making it bristle. They are not a romance. "But we are friends." He draws a line on Derek's skin with his thumbnail, one side of his mouth pulling up in a half-grin. "Maybe a little better than friends."

Derek's smile widens. Only a little, but Scott sees it. 

"I'm scared I'm going to hurt you," Scott says, letting the words fall out of his mouth like stones. "Or myself. Or…I don't know. I don't know what I'm doing. I just thought maybe you want someone who knows what they're doing."

"It's just sex, Scott."

Scott huff-laughs, squeezing Derek's leg. "You keep saying that."

"It keeps being true. I've done this before. I've… I know what I'm doing." Derek shrugs. "It's just not that hard."

"Well, not yet," Scott says, waggling his eyebrows, "but give it another couple minutes."

The smile blooms into a full-out grin.

☽ ☾ 

"Are we still looking for Boyd and Erica?"

The Beacon Hills River Walk is a misnomer. The concrete canal cut through the north end of downtown Beacon Hills doesn't tap into or spring from any of the area's natural waterways. It was built by the City Council and an assortment of businesses the year before the fire and, because it is an artificial construct made just to look pretty and picturesque, it lacks the tidal scour necessary to keep it free of algae or whining clouds of mosquitoes, thus guaranteeing the employment of the double handful of city workers whose job is to keep it pretty and picturesque. For one brief summer, Derek had been one of them, which has given him a kind of cock-eyed fondness for the thing and, in the early morning, the mosquitoes aren't so bad. 

It's as good a place as any to have this conversation, Derek guesses. 

Though he hadn't meant to, Derek had fallen asleep on the floor at Scott's. More surprisingly, Scott had let him sleep and let him shower the next morning. With Stiles still knocked out on the couch, Derek had repaid the favor by driving Scott to the hospital to pick up his mom. 

Isaac had been waiting for him at the hospital. Derek hadn't asked him to, but it wasn't unexpected. Isaac's not stupid and there's only one place Derek's been sneaking off to at night. 

That realization and Isaac's question makes Derek's stomach knot and churn worse than the smell of the coffee Isaac can't/won't give up drinking, even though the caffeine is as ineffective as booze on their metabolism. 

"Derek?"

Derek's fingers crinkle his own water bottle between his fingers and he glances sideways at Isaac. "Yes. We're still looking."

Isaac doesn't say anything, one finger moving back and forth over the rough-edged open mouth of his coffee cup lid atonally while he watches two women jogging on the other side of the canal. When they go under one of the pedway bridges and are sufficiently out of sight, he looks back at Derek. "Where?" Isaac asks, spreading his hands a little. In the brutal early morning light, he looks washed out and tired; Derek wonders if Isaac's been having nightmares again. Isaac hasn't mentioned it and Derek hasn't been there enough lately to know. 

Derek's hands close to fists and what's left of his water geysers out of the top and all over his knees and legs and shoes. 

Isaac's gaze turns dark and wary, but there's no vinegar stink of fear, and he presses, "We've looked everywhere. Everywhere I know to look, pretty sure everywhere you and Peter know to look, and nothing."

So at least they've come that far. 

"They're not in Beacon Hills," Isaac says reasonably, like this isn't anything Derek's thought about before, as though Peter hasn't been hissing this same thing in Derek's ear all this time. "If they were here, we would've found them by now."

" _Or_ , they're being held somewhere, somewhere we can't sense them." Derek swings out a little, chucks his bottle at the nearby trashcan. At the last second before it drops, a gust of wind catches the plastic and it drifts sideways, crumples to the pavement. Derek hops off the bench back to scoop it up, throw it away properly.

"Or," Isaac says, when Derek swings back onto the bench, "they're dead."

"Don't say that!" Though he has enough control not to shift, the bench's pressed wood creaks under Derek's grip. "They're not dead. I'd know if they were dead. We'd both know."

Isaac shakes his head, looking down at his hands. "I don't feel them anymore." His voice is quiet, but the lines of his body, the sharpening of his scent, telegraphs how much Isaac hates making the admission. "I don't… I don't feel like they're _gone_." He glances sideways at Derek then down again. "I just don't feel…anything."

_Me either._ But that's not something Derek can say to Isaac, to anyone. He'd always known there were things his mom didn't tell him, didn't tell the pack. Later, it was the same with Laura and he'd always just thought it was right, the way things are supposed to be. He never thought about what it cost them, to hold on their silence. He never thought about if they'd ever wanted to say more than they had. 

"I ran into Boyd's mom." Isaac slips down from the bench, goes over to the trash can to toss what's left of his coffee before tugging his sleeves down, wrapping the cuffs around his hands. "She's putting up flyers, missing person flyers, her and Erica's mom, at Deaton's, other places around town. I…told her I'd help." Isaac tucks his swathed hands into his armpits, hipshot, teetering between defiant and defensive.

Derek spreads his hands. "Okay?"

Clearly not the reaction Isaac is expecting, as his posture smoothes out again, hands falling to his sides. "I didn't know what else to tell her."

"Don't tell her anything." It comes out barking, hard, flat, and Derek tries to soften it, his jaws working around the words like there's leaves or cotton in his mouth: "There's nothing to tell her. We don't know anything more than she does: that Boyd and Erica are missing."

Another jogger, this time male and on their side of the canal; he whooshes past them, the cleanness of his sweat barely overpowering the stink of detergent and cologne and deodorant, and Isaac's gaze follows, almost helplessly, a strange hunger in his pale eyes that Derek doesn't know how to interpret, unsure if he wants to be the guy, fuck him, rip his throat out or something else entirely. 

"Did you know Boyd had a sister?" When he looks back at Derek, Isaac's foot scuffs the pavement, like a restless bull. Derek doesn't think his expression changes, but Isaac nods briefly as though Derek said something and looks away again. "Yeah, me either."

Isaac doesn't climb back up on the bench, his toe digging at the concrete like he's trying to erase something from its surface. Personally, Derek's ready to move on, get the hell out of here before the weekend ant-trails of people start to really thicken, but whatever Isaac's got up his nose, Derek can tell it's not all out yet, that there's more. So he presses his hands together and waits. 

"She disappeared, too," Isaac says finally, hoarsely, like the words hurt to say. "Boyd's sister. His mom told me. Nine years ago. They still don't know what happened to her or if she's dead." Isaac's jaw gets hard, eyes too, leaning toward gray. 

_And now Boyd._ Isaac doesn't have to say it; the weight of it falls on Derek like a boulder from above, straight into his gut, where it sits, huge and sickening. He remembers Scott telling Boyd he could do better than Derek. Even as good as things are with Scott right now, it still galls him: that Scott said it, believes it, that Scott isn't wrong. 

If he was a better man, a better Alpha, he'd make Scott take Isaac, make Isaac part of his stupid, rag-tag, not-even-a-pack pack. 

But even as he thinks it, Derek knows he doesn't believe it, not really. Scott would be a kinder, gentler Alpha, which might be good for the scarred-over skittish parts of Isaac, but kind and gentle aren't any better for Isaac's longevity than Derek's awkward and inadequate care. 

Isaac shakes his head, and for a strange, panicky moment, Derek thinks Isaac somehow overheard his thoughts. Then Isaac says: "It can't go down like this. This can't be the end of the story, that they disappear and no one knows what happened to them. Even if they're dead…" Isaac pauses, as if on the edge of a cliff, then steadies himself, the quick-surge of anger, of determination, breathing off his skin and calling to Derek's. "Even if they're dead, we have to find them. Even if it's just to bury them."

Derek nods, scruffing his beard against the grain and then back. He's let this thing with Scott take over and it was easy, easy to do so, because it feels good and that's Derek all over, gravitating to what feels good without thinking too much—not enough—about whether it's also the _smart_ thing. 

Or the responsible thing. 

"Yeah," he agrees, because Isaac is still human enough that he needs Derek to say these things out loud. "We'll find them."

He has no idea _how_ , but… He thinks about Boyd's mother, the agony of just _days_ of not knowing where Laura was, what or if something had happened to her. The Hales are all mostly dead, but at least he has the grim satisfaction of _knowing_ they're dead, no question mark hanging over it all. 

Derek gets up from the bench and nudges Isaac, marking his beta and writing Isaac's scent into his own. Isaac breathes out and presses back, leaning his forehead on Derek's shoulder. 

"We will find them," Derek promises. "Alive or dead, I won't just leave them out there."

Isaac nods, still giving off low-level anxiety and anger in about equal measure, like a slow bleed.

☽ ☾ 

"Why are we doing this?" Isaac asks, as Derek pulls up to the curb outside Scott's house.

 _I don't know._ Derek wipes his palms down his thighs, less because they're damp than it's always been calming, touching himself when there's no one else—no one else pack—to give that to him. "We told Scott's mother we'd come."

" _You_ told her," Isaac corrects, though there's teasing under the sharpness. 

Or is it sharpness under the teasing? Despite Derek's reassurance, Isaac's only gotten more prickly about Scott and Derek's let it go. Like he's let so many other things slide. Derek sits back in his chair. "Are we going to have a problem?"

"What?" Isaac's head whips around, eyes wide and real surprise puffs off his skin like bitter lime. "No."

Derek just keeps looking at him.

_"No,"_ Isaac insists. "I know…how to behave." Derek continues to stare and, after a few seconds, Isaac huffs, gritting out, "I'll be on my best behavior." He bares his teeth in something that just toes the line of being a smile. "Satisfied?"

"Barely," Derek allows. 

He reaches over, ignoring Isaac's reflexive flinch, and grabs Isaac by the back of the neck, only hard enough for Isaac to feel it, to know that he's being held by his Alpha and that Derek could hurt him if he needed to…but that he doesn't feel he needs to. 

With contact, Derek can feel the thrumming tension of Isaac's body like it's his own, muscles tightening in sympathy; Derek stops it, makes his body go loose and pushes that looseness back at Isaac, making Isaac mirror him, rather than the other way around. Pulling Isaac in so their foreheads touch, so they can breathe each other in, Derek says, "You're still my wolf. Nothing with Scott is..." _Easy. Simple. Clean._ "…about replacing you."

Isaac nods and a shudder goes through him, like he's settling back into his skin. "I know."

"I'll keep telling you until you believe it."

Isaac nods again, and this time the shiver is smaller, though undeniably there. "Okay."

Derek pulls back on his side of the car almost reluctantly. He's realizing—really, stupidly belatedly—how much he's pulled into himself, since it became just him and Laura, since it became just him. 

He gave the bite to Isaac and Erica and Boyd, he made them, made a new pack…except they haven't been, really. He's been too busy trying to keep everyone alive and out of the Argents' hands and deal with the messes he made with Peter and then Jackson. And he's been too used to being closed down, closed in, of having the only people that touched him or that he touched do it in some kind of transaction, a skin trade. And Isaac had been afraid, at least at first, and Erica would've just thought it meant he wanted to fuck her and Boyd… 

Of all his betas, Derek had seen—sees—the most of himself in Boyd. But it's been instinctual, he hasn't really known why and asking just isn't his style, as much as telling wasn't—isn't—Boyd's. But knowing what he knows now—about Boyd's mom, about Boyd's sister, the father that left and never looked back—he recognizes the nature of that kinship, that aversion to touch, both punishment and bandage.

But while Derek's busy punishing himself, he's punishing his pack—Isaac—too. 

Derek sighs and adds it to the tally of his fuck-ups and failures, the long list of things he needs to do better, be better at.

Once they're out of the car and on the sidewalk, Derek says, "You know…you can still be friends with Scott, too."

Isaac blinks, and again, that spurt of surprise in his scent, the faint skip-beat of his pulse. "What?"

"It's not an either-or. Scott or me." He bumps Isaac in the shoulder as he moves up the walk. "That's why we're doing this."

☽ ☾ 

Scott still isn't used to the sound of Derek's new SUV over the swaggery rumble of the Camaro, but having been listening out, he hears a car pull up to the curb outside the house, can identify at this distance the little clues of breath and heartbeat and movement that telegraph _Isaac_ and _Derek._

"They're here," he calls to his mom, who's still fussing with the giant enamel pot of sauce on the stove. He brushes the last piece of bread with garlic butter and puts it with the others on the baking sheet. 

"Is this going to be enough?" she says aloud, as she's been wondering to herself since she started cooking. "I could put in another jar of sauce. Or more mushrooms. Or we still have some carrots in the bottom drawer, I could add those to the sauce, can you look in the bottom drawer, no, the other bottom drawer, oh, my God, Scott, how do you not know what the word 'bottom' means?"

"Mom. Calm down. It's just Derek and Isaac, not the Obamas." Scott pauses. "Um. I don't think these _are_ carrots anymore, Mom," Scott says, fighting the urge to sneeze, reeling his senses back in as far as he can, as he holds up the bag of semi-liquefied vegetables. 

"Oh, damn." His mom grimaces, though it can't smell _nearly_ as bad to her as it does to him. She puts the hand not holding a spoon on her hip. "Well, I guess with _three_ werewolves in the house, you ought to put that outside." 

Coming clean with his mom had more benefits than the obvious, now that Scott can actually show there is a reason behind his newfound pickiness about soaps and deodorants and food other than teenage chain-yanking. 

The plastic Glade air fresheners have disappeared from the house, replaced by herby mason jars his mom made from instructions she found on the internet, and they'd both gotten better about cleaning out the fridge more often and she's a little worryingly excited about some other 'natural' recipes she's gotten from Pinterest and About.com, but Scott hadn't realized how badly, how _sick_ , the conflicting and crisscrossing smells had been bothering him until he'd told his mom, until they'd started doing something about it. 

"The sauce is fine, Mom," Scott calls, on his way outside. 

To his knowledge, neither of them have ever used the compost that they dutifully keep making in the old and battered plastic bin; the lines where Grandma Rodriguez's vegetable garden and flower beds used to be are still obvious, but they're soft, not clear and it's been several years since his mom's even tried, finally acknowledging her hopeless black thumb. 

When he gets back inside, the kitchen is empty and he can smell Derek and Isaac, in the house. Scott doesn't exactly _rush_ to the front door, but he doesn't waste any time, either. 

When he sees the three of them standing awkwardly in the hallway, in his _house_ , Isaac and Derek so large and looming next to his mom, tiny and human, the surge—of anger, of fear, of intense protectiveness, to grab his mom by the back of her shirt and jerk her away, _mine_ , the urge to let his claws and fangs drop—takes Scott by surprise, by more than surprise, shocking in its intensity. He snaps to a halt, suddenly afraid to come close and absolutely incapable of retreat, hands tightening to fists at his sides. 

Derek senses it before Isaac does; he looks up at Scott and Scott looks helplessly back. He's aware on one level that these are his friends, that they don't mean any harm, that they're here _by invitation_ , but at a deeper, more base (animal) level, wanting to rip both their throats out for having the nerve, the fucking _nerve_ to come into his house, his _home_ …

Looking over the head of Scott's mom and Isaac, Derek releases his usual tight control on his scent, a scent that's at least partially Scott's scent, too. Because Scott's been all over him, all over Derek's body. Because Scott's come all over Derek and Derek let him, Derek had asked him to do it. 

At the same time he looses his leash on his scent, Derek wads his hand into Isaac's sleeve, drawing him back toward the door, away from Scott's mom. Isaac glances, curious and a little wary, from Derek to Scott and back, but he follows Derek's lead. 

The enraged knot paralyzing Scott releases like a zit popping, a wet internal explosion that turns into deep relief. Scott inhales as if it's the first breath ever.

"Oh, Scott," his mom says, oblivious to the crosscurrents in the room, but becoming aware of his presence when both Derek and Isaac look his way. She has a fat package wrapped in waxed brown paper in her hands; the scent of bloody meat, even dampened by the package, makes Scott swallow back a flood of saliva. "Look what they brought. Isn't this nice?" Her voice wobbles a little with uncertain, manic cheeriness. "It's a venison loin."

The sides of Derek's mouth flex in an almost smile, clearly hearing Scott's mom's panic as well as Scott does. "It's a traditional host gift," he explains, unobtrusively releasing Isaac's arm, though he doesn't move away from the threshold. "Feeding us, feeding a pack…it's a strain on your resources. We give meat to alleviate some of that strain." The smile fades and Derek's scent flattens out. "It should be meat we hunted ourselves, really, but…" He shrugs and Scott thinks of the burned out hulk of the Hale's house, the train depot, which is pretty much the opposite of a home. "We got this from a specialty butcher."

"Well, it's lovely," Scott's mom says firmly, patting the paper. "Thank you." She looks pointedly at Scott.

"Thank you," Scott echoes, just glad he can say the words, rather than snarling. 

"Dinner isn't quite ready yet," his mom apologizes, backing toward the rear of the house. "I'm afraid you'll have to entertain yourselves, while I finish up and Scott sets the table. I'd like to say I'm not usually this disorganized, but hey!" She throws up the hand not cradling the venison loin and laughs. "I totally am!"

"Isaac can help you set the table," Derek volunteers, clearly without consulting Isaac, who whips around, giving Derek a look that's half pissed, half pleading. Derek gives him a push toward Scott's mom. 

"I…can help," Isaac agrees, nodding. 

"Sure," his mom says after a pause. Scott feels her gaze on him like a spot of sunlight through a magnifying glass. "C'mon, Isaac, I'll show you where everything is."

Scott flinches when Isaac steps away from the door, but it's fine, Scott doesn't feel anything about it, let alone the all-encompassing rage of a few moments ago. Scott moves out of the way to let Isaac past; when his mother goes through the doorway to the back, he sinks down on the stairs. 

"What the hell _was_ that?" he asks, looking up at Derek. That gets a rumble from the back of his spine; he doesn't like having to look up at Derek. 

Derek crouches down, maybe sensing Scott's discomfort. "Territorial instinct," he says, gaze flickering searchingly over Scott's face. Scott doesn't know exactly what Derek's looking for. Scott can still smell himself on Derek, familiar and oddly comforting, but the rest of Derek is opaque to him. "It's… You've been bitten for, what about six months now?"

Scott nods. "About that, yeah."

Derek drags a hand down his face and if Scott can't read into Derek's scent, he recognizes Derek's _anywhere but here_ expression just fine. "Your body is still changing…"

Scott tilts his head and wrinkles his nose. "Is this the werewolf version of the birds and bees?"

Derek sighs deeply, painfully, pinching his nose. "Your body is still _adapting to the bite,_ " he grits out. "It doesn't all kick in at once, it doesn't… Your whole body changed. It's not just being stronger, or healing faster, the bite remakes you. Completely." He looks up and Scott can feel the strength of him again, the power of an Alpha, even though Derek isn't trying to do anything with it, isn't trying to force anything on Scott. "And some things take longer than others to…translate."

"How do you know all this? You didn't go through this." Scott asks the question before he can think about it, but just as fast, and before Derek's eyes can do more than flicker darkly, he knows the answer: "…but members of your family did." Scott slaps his forehead with the heel of his hand, inadequate penance for grinding salt in that particular wound. "Sorry, that was dumb. Sorry."

Derek doesn't say anything, though the tightness of his jaw does the talking for him. "Anyway," Derek says finally, extending back up to his full height and rubbing his hands down his legs, "we shouldn't have come in, without you here to greet us, to let us in. I didn't think, because…"

He trails off, but for once, Scott thinks he actually knows the end of that sentence: _because it's been okay before._ Which raises the specter of all the times Derek's been in the house before, good and bad, and Scott just doesn't have the brain power right now to think about all that and all this and the dinner, too.

Scott shakes his head, shooing the thoughts back to the respective corners. "No, it's cool." He shrugs, unsure about how cool any of this really is. Werewolf growing pains and another set of instincts to worry about, what the hell? 

A thought occurs to him. "It's not going to be like this all the time, is it?" Scott bounces up off the step with a new burst, this one panic. "Because, Stiles, he's got a key…"

"Dinner's ready!" Scott's mom calls from the kitchen. 

Scott thinks he might puke. He hasn't said anything to Stiles about it, but he knows that, since Gerard, Stiles gets spooked, being by himself in the long nights while his dad's at work, knows that's why Stiles has been over on so many nights. 

Derek grabs Scott's shoulder, fingers digging in hard. "No," he says firmly. "Isaac and I, we're not pack, we're not _your_ pack and that's what you responded to, two wolves of another pack in your space, your home. Stiles… Stiles is human, and even if he wasn't…" Derek suddenly looks at his hand as if it's gone Evil Dead on him, he lets Scott go. 

_Stiles is part of my pack._ Scott doesn't need Derek to fill that in for him, either. So it's no more likely than usual that he's going to end up accidentally killing Stiles some night that Stiles gets too bored or lonely (or anxious) at home. 

And now he feels like puking in relief.

Pulling himself together, another thought sparks bright in the chaotic darkness of Scott's mind. "Is it like that, every time I come see you?" he asks, squinting as he tries to imagine it. 

It's actually not _that_ hard to picture, given Derek's default state of irritated grumpiness. But if Derek's been fighting a pull that strong, every time Scott's gone into his space, then Derek's self-control is a _lot_ better than Scott's ever given him credit for.

Derek doesn't move, but Scott feels it, recoil under the skin like a flinch. "No," Derek says shortly.

"Um," Isaac interrupts from the other side of the stair railing. "Your mother asked me to come and get you two."

Scott doesn't glance at Isaac, trying to figure out what he said wrong, to get that reaction from Derek, but Derek's not giving anything away. Situation normal. "Yeah," Scott says finally, wrenching his gaze away from Derek to Isaac. "Here I come."

☽ ☾ 

This dinner is going a lot better than Derek even thought possible.

They're close to an hour in and Melissa hasn't asked him about his family or the fire. She hasn't asked Isaac about his dad. There haven't been any odd, intrusive questions about werewolf physiology or biology or culture. The possibility for all these things, or some other disaster he can't contemplate, is still there, but he doesn't sense that Melissa's waiting for the right moment to pounce and corner him. 

"…and so she throws herself at the casket. And the guy with the hat grabs for her, but they're both too heavy for the tarp…"

In fact, there hasn't been any pressure for him to talk at all. Melissa chatters enough that Derek wonders if Scott and Stiles were somehow traded at birth and, after the initial stilted preliminaries of complimenting and talking about the food—which is better than promised, meat-rich and in portions plenty big enough for even three werewolves—they'd somehow morphed into the worst and most disgusting things any of them have ever eaten, which had given way to Melissa's war stories about life in the ER. 

To Derek's complete astonishment, Isaac's now telling stories from when he worked in the graveyard. 

"…so they're trying to pull her out and she's going, 'no, no, just leave me here', and the edge is starting to cave in…" 

It's probably the most he's ever heard Isaac say at one time, Derek muses, picking up another round of garlic bread and tearing it in half to drag it through the puddles of sauce left on his plate. 

Whatever stick Isaac had up his ass when they pulled up to his house, his time helping Melissa in the kitchen seems to have effected its removal; he's almost as animated as Melissa, flushed and bright-eyed, the lines of his shoulders and back soft, other than excited tension as he gestures. Everyone's scent is mellow, relaxed and Derek is relaxing, too, a slow melt. 

"Oh, my God, that's just like, do you remember? When Greenberg…?" Scott chimes in.

"Oh, man," Isaac laughs and facepalms, "yeah! The Coach, his face!" He does something with his fingers in front of his face that Derek doesn't understand at all, but that makes Scott bend over the table with red-faced and breathless giggles. 

Melissa looks from Isaac to Scott, laughing mostly because the boys are. "Care to translate for the rest of the table?" she asks. She glances across the table at Derek, her crinkle-eyed grin inviting Derek to laugh with them. 

He can tell she doesn't mean anything by it, he's pretty sure, anyway, it seems to be just the kind of woman she is, but for a moment, all Derek can see is that same expression on Kate's face, and the memories—and everything that comes with them—smash into him with all the force of a speeding car to the chest. 

Derek doesn't mean to broadcast it, but he never tightened up his control again after Scott's freak-out at the door. He can't smell himself, exactly, but Isaac and Scott stop hooting at the same time. Isaac throws himself out of his chair and to his knees next to Derek, hands moving like he's searching for a wound. Scott's reaction isn't as strong—he's not Derek's pack, Derek's beta—but he still reaches for Derek's hand, slack on the table, squeezing Derek's fingers.

"Derek?" Scott asks. 

"What's going on?" Melissa looks at each of them, poised on the edge of her seat and gripping the table's edge.

"I'm fine," Derek says to Scott, pulling his arm out from under Scott's. Finding no injury, Isaac's folded himself against Derek's side; Derek brushes his palm across Isaac's cheek, feeling transformed bone and the bristle of extra hair. When he turns Isaac's face out and up to the light, amber wolf-eyes blink, confused. "I'm fine," Derek says again, giving Isaac's jaw one last brush of his thumb before he pushes Isaac gently back. To Melissa: "Everything's fine." 

He gets up from the table and walks out. 

"What the hell just happened?" he hears Melissa demand. Then, when Scott's chair scrapes back from the table, she says, quieter, "No…sit down. I'll go."

Derek hits the open air outside and inhales. He's locked down again, but _he_ still feels his heart going triple-time in his chest. He gallops down the stairs and is halfway down the walk when Melissa calls out behind him: "We haven't had dessert yet!"

Of all the things she could've said—that he was afraid she'd say—it's probably the one thing that could stop him, all his mother's words and all the rituals of hosting and guesting like ghosts that ride on his shoulders. Derek skids to a stop. Turns around, pain tugging in his nail beds, in his lower back, demanding a crouch instead of standing so vulnerably tall. 

Melissa is standing at the top of the steps, alternately wringing and squeezing her hands more a nervous tic than actual nervousness. "Scott," she says, rocking her weight from sneakered foot to foot, "since…" she glances around, showing that Scott's utter lack of discretion is either his own or inherited from his father. "Well, since everything with him, he's been pretty lactose intolerant. I don't know if that has to do with all the changes or not…"

"It does."

Melissa nods and Derek can see her filing the info away, avid for it, greedy, though she hasn't asked for it. Or for anything else. 

"I don't bake," Melissa says suddenly, a non-sequitur. "My grandmother, my mother, my aunt Sara, they were the great bakers in the family. Me," she touches above her breast with both hands, smiling but wreathed in faint sadness, "I don't bake. And since ice cream didn't seem to be an option, I sliced up peaches and strawberries…do you ever get to the River Walk farmer's market on Saturdays? Probably not, huh?"

Derek shakes his head, somewhere between dumbfounded and flat out confused.

"Yeah, I expected not. You and Isaac should go. The peaches this year have been to die for." She sighs dreamily, tucking back a curling tendril of her hair. "And you don't have to have a lot of storage for fresh fruit, because you eat it up so fast." 

Melissa shrugs and again she gives him that conspiratorial look, though this time it doesn't remind him of Kate at all. Just Scott's mom, overly busy and careworn and absurdly kind. Kinder than he deserves. 

"Anyway, I sprinkled sugar over it all and by now," she glances at her watch, "it should've melted down to a delicious syrup. And you should come back in and have some." She holds a hand out to him, asking, but in a matter of fact way that makes it seem like a done deal. "Because we haven't had dessert yet and it's not really a meal without something sweet to finish it off, don't you think?"

"Yeah," Derek agrees. His mouth, his throat, feels dry, though the word sounds easy enough when it comes out. It's much harder to cross the few yards back to the house and to do it on his feet. He stops at the foot of the stairs, and looks up at her, even his vision unable to make out the details of her face clearly when she's backlit by the brassy porch light, all the inky blue and deepening darkness behind him. That makes it a little easier. 

"They were responding to my scent," Derek says, because she didn't ask, because it's what he has to—can—give, after her kindness. "It was a…a bad memory and it surprised me and they could smell it on me. That's all. That's all it was." 

"Oh." 

It takes a moment for her to think it through but Derek sees the moment she understands, her shoulders slumping as a knot she probably doesn't even know is there cuts loose. Her next breath is deeper, bigger; soft, floral relief rising above the antiseptic scent of the harsh soaps and disinfectants of her job. _"Oh."_ Her hand flutters to her stomach, pressing in and Derek thinks, _here it comes,_ the flood of questions, the inquisitive, snoopy prying, the endless need to pry into his body, his mind.

All she says, though, is: "Okay. Then let's see about that dessert."

☽ ☾ 

Later, after dessert, Melissa sends Scott and Isaac off upstairs like recalcitrant puppies and drafts Derek into helping her clear the table and wash the dishes. He hands off the empty fruit bowls, still wet and fragrant with juice and sugar and she says, "We should do this again."

She glances sideways at him, eyebrows arched, but as when she'd lured him back into the house, it's not really a question and nothing about her suggests that it's just politeness. Just the opposite; Derek sees Scott's quiet but persistent stubbornness, sees that _no_ isn't an answer Melissa's going to accept. 

"Why?" Derek starts to lean against the counter, but he can't be still and watch her work. There's a dishtowel hanging from a drawer; Derek tugs it free and starts drying. 

The dip and slur of the rag into the soapy water pauses. Melissa turns away from the sink toward him, tucking one hand on her hip. She sighs. "Scott would kill me for saying this," she says, "but he doesn't have a lot of friends."

Derek frowns. It seems delusional that Melissa would say that; Scott is completely _swamped_ with people. Even Derek's own betas can't stay away from him. 

"And now that he is what he is…" Melissa's voice trembles a little with the skitter of her heartbeat, though she recovers quickly, "it's going to be harder for him. He's going to have to…" Her head tilts sideways and she regards Derek in a way that makes him want to either growl or hide behind the dishtowel like a terrified virgin in a movie. 

"…keep secrets," she concludes. "He's going to have to hide himself, from everyone he comes into contact with. And lie to people. And look at everyone he meets with suspicion, as a threat." Melissa looks down, the hand still holding the dishrag rocking with restless pensiveness on the sink's edge. "And that…sounds really lonely," Melissa says finally, a burr to it, like the words are sticking in the back of her throat. 

Derek keeps drying the dishes. 

Melissa clears her throat, turns back to the sink and goes back to soaping the flatware. "Anyway. You and Isaac are already Scott's friends. You already know about him. And, more importantly, you know what it's like. Scott's going to need friends like that." She rinses a big handful of the flatware at one time, like a particularly spiky bouquet. "And…I'll hope you forgive me for saying so, but…" She reaches out and Derek knows she's going to touch him, but he lets it happen, her cool little hand on his wrist, barely contact at all, and easy to pull away from. "You and Isaac, now it's just the two of you…" She takes her hand back and shrugs. "Well. I'm his mother and I know I'm biased, but I think Scott's a pretty great friend to have."

Derek wonders if she'd feel the same, if she'd be so tenderly kind to him if she knew the things he's done to Scott, the things they did just last night. The impulse to tell her, to throw it—and the reality of him—into her face, pulses hotly strong as the urge to shift on a full moon.

At the same time, he remembers Isaac at dinner, excited and talkative. Clearly, the Isaac Derek knows isn't Isaac in his natural state, it's just who Isaac is around Derek. And equally clearly, Isaac wants more. 

Derek braces his hands on the counter, clenching the dish towel tightly enough that water squeezes from the cloth and runs down the cabinet front. 

"Oh, buck up, kid." Melissa rubs his back briskly, then pats his shoulder. "It's a lot of home cooking, for free."

☽ ☾ 

"Yeah, sorry," Scott apologizes to Isaac, after the extremely brief tour of his bedroom, "there's not much to do up here."

Isaac shrugs, starts to sit on the bed, but stops before his butt makes contact with the mattress. Scott cringes a little as Isaac moves to take the desk chair instead. 

He washed the sheets twice and put one of his mom's homemade air fresheners over a tea light until pretty much all the water inside boiled away and the whole room stank of cinnamon, but against werewolf senses, he can't hide that the whole room reeks like he and Derek have been fucking all over it. Especially the mattress. And the Febreeze he used on it just made him sneeze a lot without really doing anything.

"Sorry," Scott says again, meaning something else, as Isaac settles gingerly in the chair, nostrils flaring with unobtrusive scenting. He would never've brought Isaac up here in the first place if his mom hadn't insisted. 

Isaac shrugs.

Still, it drags Derek back in—to Scott's mind, into the conversation—not that Scott's been able to get very far away from thinking about Derek. "So." Scott tries to think of a graceful, less obvious way to say it but can't come up with one, so he just plunges ahead. "Does that happen with Derek a lot?"

Scott isn't even sure what happened; let alone how to describe it. One moment, they were sitting and enjoying dinner together and the next, his entire body was reacting like he'd touched a live wire. 

Except instead of electricity, it was pumping him full of…of anger—rage—and shame and terrible, deep sadness, all of it cranked up to eleven, bigger and deeper than _anything_ Scott's ever felt before. And all of it written over with _Derek_ as surely as if he'd signed his name in piss and sweat. 

Isaac swings the chair around to face Scott, tilting his head and widening his eyes. "Shouldn't I be asking you that question?"

"Why wou…" Understanding comes too late for Scott to not jam his foot way, way in his mouth. "Oh." 

It's not that he didn't know he and Derek were spending a lot more time together. Hell, Derek had conked out on his floor just last night. And of course, Isaac can't help but notice it. It's literally all over them. 

It seems to Scott that becoming a werewolf is the sort of thing that should've made his life _less_ humiliating, but it hasn't been his experience so far and he's not holding out a whole lot of hope for the future. 

"I never felt anything like that before," Scott offers finally, because he really does want to talk about it. "Not just with Derek, I've never felt anything like that, period." 

It'd been like a riptide, the pull of it. He hadn't gone to his knees, the way Isaac had…but a part of him had wanted to, wanted to strip Derek naked and go over each inch of his skin, looking for whatever part of him is so badly hurt. 

"Derek usually buttons himself up pretty tight," Isaac says, turning in toward the desk. He sorts through and restacks the books Scott's been reading this summer. 

"Yeah, but…" Scott trails off, trying to filter the things in his head down to words. "You're his beta. And…you felt it stronger than I did, right?" Isaac had come out of the chair like Derek had jerked on a rope tied between them. "I mean… I know me and Derek have been…"

"Hooking up?" Isaac asks, looking up from flipping through Scott's copy of _White Fang_. The coolness of his gaze conflicts with the habanero heat lingering at the edge of his scent.

"I…was going to say hanging out," Scott says, feeling the blush spreading from his hairline down, searing the skin of his neck, his chest.

"But it's not," Isaac cuts in, pushing himself around so he's fully facing Scott again. "It's not just 'hanging out'. You're…" Red creeps into Isaac's pale skin, too, though there is _no way on earth_ that Isaac can be more embarrassed than Scott about this, no way. "I don't even know what you're doing. I don't want to know. But I can _smell_ it."

It's Scott's turn to look away, fingers locking and unlocking between his knees. Another thing not in the Welcome to Lycanthropy Handbook: Privacy, And How You'll Never Have It Again.

"What about Allison?" Though Isaac still smells pissed, the question sounds genuinely curious and Scott doesn't know which cue to respond to, which sense to trust. "I thought… All the time, you were acting like she was your big, one true love. Or was that just bullshit?"

"No!" Scott knows Isaac's angry about something, but how the hell could he even ask that question in any kind of seriousness? 

"But now you're into Derek?"

"Allison… Allison's everything." Scott flounders. How do you explain something that huge, something that goes down to the core of who you are, in just _words_? "She's just…" _Gone_.

It hits Scott all over again, the huge climbing swell, an echo of what he felt from Derek, and it's hard not to double over with it, how much it hurts, how much it _still_ hurts, like it will never stop. 

"Hey," Isaac says, sounding and smelling alarmed, because of course, he gets the feedback from Scott's scent the same way Scott is getting and interpreting his. "I didn't mean to…"

"I don't want to talk about Allison," Scott says, making the effort to enunciate every word crisply, because it feels like his lips are numb. He unclenches his fingers from the bedspread, smoothing it to look for holes in the cloth, unsure if his nails shifted while he wasn't paying attention. 

"Yeah, okay," Isaac agrees, too fast. The cloth is whole. 

"Derek…" Scott shakes his head. "I don't know what you think or what he told you…."

Isaac raises one eyebrow, staring steadily back at Scott.

Scott's chest hitches with an almost-laugh. "Yeah, okay, fine, he hasn't told you anything. But we don't talk, Derek and me." The blush, which had been slowly fading, flares into a second, phoenix-like life across his face. "That…what happened downstairs, is the closest he's _ever_ come to sharing his feelings with me."

Isaac makes a noise like he's blowing a raspberry, but a second later, when his eyes squinch shut and his shoulders shake as he leans forward in the chair, Scott realizes Isaac's laughing. It only takes a second of mental replay for Scott to join in, because, yeah. _Derek._

When they finally stop giggling, the air in the room—metaphorically, at least—feels clearer, less tense. Enough so that Scott ventures: "Me and Stiles were going to the midnight showing of Transformers, Tuesday night. Or, I guess, early Wednesday morning. Whichever. You wanna go?"

Isaac looks surprised and Scott realizes it has been a while since the three of them have hung out. "Yeah," Isaac agrees. Then, his expression cools a little. "If I can," he amends. 

"Why 'if you can'?" Isaac doesn't say anything. "Derek isn't…" A shift: in the way Isaac's sitting, on his face, in his scent. Scott pauses. " _Is_ Derek going to mind if you hang out with us?" He considers again. Since he and Derek have started…doing whatever it is they're doing, the only time he's even really seen Isaac was the night of the full moon, when they were all together. "Does Derek not want you hanging out with me?"

Isaac rolls his eyes, which Scott finds perversely reassuring. "I just might be _busy_ ," Isaac says. "My whole life doesn't revolve around waiting for you and Stiles to invite me to go places."

Scott rears back a little. "I didn't think it did. That's why it was a _question_."

Isaac huffs. "I'll let you know tomorrow."

"Okay," Scott agrees. The ability to ferret out scent and heartbeat and emotional state is no help at all in figuring out what's going on in someone's head. The way Isaac's running hot and cold—and has been for a while, Scott realizes—he's got no clue. "Sure."

It has to be something to do with Derek, though, right? Who else would care about what Isaac's doing at midnight? Does he have a girlfriend? A boyfriend? 

"If it's…" Isaac looks at Scott and Scott falters. "If you want to bring someone…"

"Who?" Isaac shrugs. "Practically everyone I know is in this house."

Not a girlfriend/boyfriend, then. Unless _Derek_ is…

Scott feels like all the hair on his body stands up on end, goosebumps spreading across his skin. He'd told his mom that Isaac and Derek weren't, but could they be? 

"Yeah, I just thought, you know, _if…_ " Scott shrugs weakly. 

But if Derek _was_ fucking Isaac, Scott would be able to smell it on him, the same way Isaac smells it on Scott, right? Except that Derek and Isaac always kind of smell like each other, because they're pack and they spend most of their time together, especially now that it's summer. 

"Oh, _if_." Isaac nods and then shakes his head, rolling his eyes at the ceiling, but with a faint smile. "Jerk."

Scott smiles back. "Not on purpose."

"Isaac!" Derek doesn't have to shout, especially from the foot of the stairs, but he does anyway. "C'mon. Leaving."

Isaac gets up. "Gotta go."

"Hey!" Scott says, before Isaac can go. He feels like they didn't talk about anything that he wanted to talk about and he's got more questions now than he started with. 

Isaac spreads his hands, widening his eyes. "What?"

The words jam up in Scott's throat. Finally, he manages to grit out, "Is Derek okay?" 

Isaac looks back at Scott like he wants to say something, as if he's going to say something…but then his face closes up and Isaac shrugs. "Define 'okay'." 

Isaac walks out of the bedroom.

☽ ☾ 

"Are you okay?"

"What?" Derek hates the stoplight on El Dorado. It's slow and he always has the sneaking suspicion that it's slow just for _him_. He glances sideways at Isaac in the passenger seat. 

"Nothing," Isaac says, staring out the window. "Never mind." 

Derek taps his thumbs on the steering wheel, staring at the signal and willing it to change with the power of his mind. Which…has never worked so far, but it never stops him from trying. 

"Scott asked me," Isaac says. "Before we left. If you're okay." 

Derek grunts, looking at Isaac again. "What did you tell him?"

Isaac turns his head, gazing back. "I didn't tell him anything."

"Okay. Good." Derek nods and goes back to looking at the traffic signal, which is _still_ stubbornly red. Derek flexes his foot on the brake restlessly. "Because there's nothing to tell," he adds belatedly, aware of the sour thread of Isaac's worry, spreading through the car. 

Isaac nods. "Okay."

Derek thinks about turning on the radio, but he doesn't think he can stand the noise right now, the nerves at the back of his neck tight and jangling. 

"Are you…"

This light is never going to change. They are never going to move from this spot, a Purgatory of motionlessness and Isaac wanting to talk about feelings. "What?"

"Going out tonight?"

"No." It hadn't even occurred to him, actually, which Derek guesses is progress from the nights when he hasn't been able to think about anything else. Still, Scott—sex with Scott—seems almost like something from another lifetime, or that he saw in a movie, right now. 

Derek glances at Isaac just in time to watch Isaac's shoulders relax, which in turn makes Derek aware of his own shoulders, knotted up around his ears. Derek straightens his back, makes his scapula round down. He pats Isaac's knee. 

Isaac puts his hand over Derek's, holding it there. 

The fucking light finally turns green. 

"Isaac—" 

"On the roof…" Isaac starts. "You said I didn't want to. What if I did want to?"

There's no one behind them, but they can't just sit at the intersection. Derek lets up off the brake, lets the weight of the car roll them out before he presses gingerly down on the gas. They slink along like one of those half-blind septuagenarians who can't see past the speedometer but can't give up driving, either. 

" _Do_ you want to?" Derek asks. He still can't sense a hint of arousal from Isaac. Just the fact of his hand's immobility makes him want to move it. 

Isaac pauses, long enough that Derek thinks maybe Isaac's rethinking the whole thing. Then, low and uncertain, Isaac says, "I don't know." He moves his fingers, releasing Derek. Derek twitches, but he doesn't take his hand back, doesn't move away, though it abruptly gets easier to drive. 

It's a few silent miles later before Isaac speaks up again. 

"I want—" he begins, falters again. Impatience presses against the inside of Derek's skin like an itch but he makes himself wait it out, wait Isaac out. "When you touch me… I want it, when you touch me." Isaac sighs, throwing his head back against the seat rest like he's frustrated. Derek's not sure if it's with himself or with Derek. 

"Sometimes it feels like an itch, this horrible itch, all over and I can't scratch it, I can't do anything about it, and then you'll just…" His shoulders flex. "Something stupid. Bump my shoulder or just accidentally brush against me and it stops. No…it more than stops. It feels better. It feels _good_." Isaac turns his face toward Derek. "Isn't that love? Isn't that me being in love with you?"

Derek sighs and pulls off to the side of the road. He has to take his hand from Isaac's leg to put the car in park but he puts it right back once they're parked. "It is…"

"I hate that you're fucking Scott," Isaac interrupts, his voice dull and sharp at the same time. "I know you want me to be nice to him, get along with him, and I'm trying…" Isaac fists his hands on his thighs and the heat of him, skin and scent and raging heartbeat, fills the car. "I don't… You're not _his_."

Derek bonks the back of his head against the seat, breathing out. So this is what it is. "It's not love. What you feel, it's not love," he says finally. "Or…it's not love like you're thinking. It's not being _in_ love."

"I don't _like_ being touched," Isaac says thinly, pressing his fists into his thighs. "Even before the stuff with my dad, I was _not_ a cuddly kid." Isaac shakes his head, the hard angles of his jaw even sharper. "And now…"

"But you don't want me to fuck you," Derek insists. Scent may not tell the whole story, but it doesn't lie. "It's _pack_ love you feel, not some kind of crush on me. That closeness, that need, to be together, for, for contact…" He squeezes Isaac's knee. "It's instinct. The way you feel about Scott right now, it's instinct. It's the same instinct and it's _why_ I need you to be friends with Scott. Because he's not pack, but he's a friend. And you need to spend enough time around him to overcome your instinct, for your body to know that he's a friend. So you don't hate him.

"If Scott was another pack that we were trying to ally with, they'd send you to live with him, with his pack, and they'd send someone to live with us, an exchange, so your bodies can know, as well as your mind, that this is a friend, this is someone we trust."

"And you trust Scott?" Isaac asks, eyebrows arching high. 

Derek pulls up short against those conflicting thoughts, the part of him that thinks _better than I trust myself_ versus the part that is angry and sickened and appalled at Scott's naiveté, his galling soft-handed idealism, his desperate lack of knowledge about _everything_ , everything supernatural, everything that makes Derek's life what it is. 

Derek had killed Peter for lots of reasons, but probably none of them stronger than the fear—terror—of putting himself in Scott's _very young_ hands, of being under the control of all that inexperience and cock-eyed optimism. 

"I trust Scott to be there if we need him," Derek says finally, a truth as unshakable as his uncertainty about everything else. "We don't have a lot of people I can say that about. Stiles, Scott…they're irritating as hell," Isaac's smile is sudden, surprising them both and Derek flashes one back briefly, "but they're loyal. And they're brave. If you're in trouble, if you can't find me, if I can't get to you… You call Scott."

Isaac nods, looking down again. "And this…" Isaac waves at Derek's hand still braced over Isaac's knee. "…it doesn't mean I'm gay?"

"I don't know if you're gay," Derek says, shrugging. "That's a question you gotta answer yourself. But you're not gay for me. And that it's not 'gay' to want contact from the pack, to want me to touch you, as your packmate, as your Alpha. To want to touch back," he adds, as Isaac's fingers creep, testing, over the backs of Derek's. All at once, Derek puts his arm around Isaac, pulling him as far in as their respective seatbelts will allow, digging his knuckles playfully into Isaac's side. "So I guess you're very cuddly, now." 

Isaac growls, displeased…but he doesn't pull away.

☽ ☾ 

"Did you buy out the entire concession stand?" Scott asks, when Stiles and Isaac finally make their appearance and he can stop trying to straddle the three prime seats, center screen just behind the dividing rail.

"It was crowded," Stiles says from behind a giant defensive wall of popcorn, soda and at least four different kind of candy. "And…I'm hungry, okay? I have a very fast metabolism. Here, take these." He dips his knees for Scott to take the two sodas, a brief rain of popcorn falling from the bags. "Actually, take the rest of this, too. I gotta piss. I don't want to miss anything." 

"C'mon Stillinski!" a familiar voice jeers from several rows up. "Down in front!"

Stiles shoots upright, both middle fingers already popped. "Fuck you, Greenberg! It's not even time for previews yet, you defective monkey!" Stiles shouts back, to general laughs and catcalls and a new shower of popcorn from above. The crowd is really restless and Scott feels restless with them, twitchy and distracted. 

"Scoot over," Isaac says, ushering Scott into the middle seat with his leg. "If I have to sit next to Stiles for the whole movie, I will shove this entire bottle down his throat." Isaac flops in the seat to Scott's right and slams his bottle of Dasani into the cup holder.

"He's going to talk through the movie, too," Scott warns and Isaac groans. "I'm sorry, there's just no way around it." 

"Whatever." Isaac huffs and resettles himself in the seat, kicking his feet up on the rail's lowest bar. 

"How's Derek?" Scott asks. He feels like an idiot and a tool for asking, for asking like he _cares_ , which… Of course he cares, if there's one thing Scott prides himself on, it's being a guy who cares about other people, but there's a difference between _normal_ caring and caring like he cares because he and Derek mess around and he knows which side of that line he's on, but he's not sure that _Isaac_ knows. 

But he hasn't heard from Derek since the dinner on Saturday, when Derek seemed very not-okay and, totally aside from some background level horniness, history has shown that when Derek is not-okay, Scott should probably worry about it. 

"He's fine," Isaac says, taking one of the bags of popcorn from Scott's arms and picking fussily through the contents. He sounds unconcerned and Scott's not sure if he'd know if Isaac's scent was saying anything different, his senses hammered by the thick fug of popcorn and chocolate and a couple hundred people—mainly teenagers—wedged together. "Why?"

Scott shrugs. "I don't know. Things were weird on Saturday and tonight, he just dropped you off and…" Scott stops, smiles sheepishly. "Yeah, that just sounds pathetic. I don't know."

Isaac, mercifully, just grins, tossing a handful of popcorn in the air and catching them neatly in his mouth. 

"Hey, I can do that!" Stiles says, hopping the rail and dropping into the seat on Scott's other side. 

"No, you can't," Scott says, Isaac echoing the words only a millisecond behind. 

"Everyone's a critic." Stiles grabs the bag of popcorn that's soaked in the artificial butter that neither Scott nor Isaac can stomach anymore. He rips the top off a box of Raisinettes and dumps them on top of the popcorn, pinching the bag's top closed and shaking it all together. Scott's the one that actually taught Stiles that trick. 

The thing is, Scott knows he probably wouldn't still be brooding about this—Derek—except that he's cut off from all the stuff he'd normally do to stop brooding. People think of Stiles as the talker—and comparatively, he is—but Stiles talking is mostly just a 'now loading' screen while the real work goes on, lightning-fast, in his head. Scott can't do that. Scott isn't like Stiles; it's harder for him to just figure things out in his head. His thoughts scatter and refuse to solidify. He needs to talk them out, put words around them like little corral fences they use with the puppies and kittens at the clinic, to keep them all in one place and not zinging everywhere. That's exactly what Scott's thoughts are like.

But he can't talk to Stiles, or his mom, about this, about Derek. 

His mom isn't even a consideration. Dead stop, no-go, not gonna happen. And Stiles… Scott knows with exhausted clarity how that conversation will go. Stiles will look at his worry and take it as a sign that Scott's getting attached and they'll spend all their time wading through that instead of the real problem, which is what's going on with Derek. And whether it's a sign of a bigger problem. 

Isaac nudges Scott's shoulder. "Want some?" He holds out his bag of popcorn. He, at least, seems to have gotten over whatever was up his butt at dinner. He's been friendlier all night. 

"So," Stiles crowds in on Scott's other side, "I was reading Capone's review again, from back in May…"

"Do not," Scott says, "even think about spoiling me. We're _right here_. In the theater."

"Okay, but…"

"Stiles, I will tie you to this chair and gag you, seriously."

"And if he doesn't," Isaac adds, "I will. Shut up."

The theater's lights start to dim. Stiles makes a disgusted noise and withdraws to his own seat, fingers tapping staccato against the empty cup holder between him and Scott. Firmly, Scott puts his hand over Stiles', until Stiles switches to the more acceptable jittering of his leg. 

Scott's thoughts keep running on spin cycle through the previews (Captain America looks like it's going to be freaking _epic_ ), but it all whites out, the way it always does, when the movie comes on, like falling through a hole in the screen. 

When they talk about it, him and Stiles, they mostly talk about the explosions and Megan Fox and the cars and all that stuff but there was a time—that one time—that they talked about the other stuff, too, the big stuff about…not heroism so much as being the guy who's there in that moment, the one who _can_ do something, and the importance of things bigger than yourself, and just being in the wrong place at the right time. 

And now more than ever: ordinary, nerdy Sam Witwicky, whose whole life gets changed—transformed—by accident and coincidence. 

Yeah, Scott can't relate to that _at all_.

The afterglow doesn't last very long, though. The three of them careen out of the theater and into the hallway, talking a million miles a minute above the tidal roar of several hundred people all doing the same thing, when the nerves at the back of Scott's neck twang and he picks up the faint hint of another wolf—not Isaac, not Derek—mingled in with all the Axe body-spray and incomplete hygiene. 

Isaac must smell it, too, because the two of them stagger to a halt—much to the loud and vocal displeasure of everyone crowding along behind them. Stiles goes another few steps without them before he realizes he's walking alone and turns around.

"You smell that?" Scott murmurs, too low for anyone but Isaac to hear and Isaac nods. 

"Is this the type of thing where we stand and fight, or run away screaming?" Stiles asks, pushing back against the crowd's riptide to get back to them. "Did Peter do something especially heinous again?"

"Peter?" Scott asks, rocking against the steady push of people. "What…?" Scott doesn't know how to describe it, but he feels Isaac on the verge of shifting, right here. 

"I thought I saw him while we were at the concession stand," Stiles says, oblivious to Isaac's tension, "but I wasn't sure and it didn't seem urgent." Stiles shrugs. 

_"Don't,"_ Scott says in an urgent undertone, grabbing Isaac's wrist and squeezing. 

"I mean, even psychotic murders take a night off to go to the show, right? Right?" Stiles looks from Scott to Isaac, eyes watchful above the rubber-clown softness of his grin. 

Now that he's looking for him, Scott spies Peter, edging unobtrusively but casually along the inside wall, a half-eaten bag of popcorn tucked in his arm. As if he senses Scott's eyes on him, Peter turns his head and smiles, an expression that would be warm from anyone not a zombie, lycanthrope, head-fucking, murderer. 

_"Scott!"_ Isaac hisses. When Isaac's fingers clamp down on Scott's wrist in turn, Scott hears and feels the growl building in his throat, he realizes how close he is to shifting himself, to attacking. 

"Scott, let's go," Stiles agrees, pressing in on Scott's other side. Peter changes direction to come toward them. Stiles tugs at Scott's elbow. "C'mon."

"Yeah," Scott says, his voice thick and deeper than normal. "I don't want to talk to him." 

"Me either," Stiles agrees, echoed by Isaac's, "Ugh, no."

They duck back into the theater, much emptied by now, which makes it easier to thread through to the emergency exit at the front, near the screen. 

A part of Scott worries—is always worried—that Peter will be able to call him back, will be able to control him, even now. As they escape into the concrete staff tunnels that will let them out into the parking lot, Scott waits for that low, dirty jerk in his gut. 

But it doesn't come. Scott pushes through the double doors at the end of the hall, walks another half dozen steps, then folds in half, palms braced on his knees, wondering if he's going to puke and panting way harder than justified. 

"Hey, you okay?" Stiles puts a hand on Scott's back and leans down into Scott's face, too close. Scott bites back on a snarl. 

"Fine," Scott grits, pushing Stiles back as gently as he can manage. Straightening up, he gropes for control and it comes easier than he expects, the memories flooding him: the ache and weight of Derek's cock in his mouth, the stab and tingle as Derek sucks bruises into Scott's skin that heal nearly as fast as they form. 

Peter's gone. Peter has no power over him. 

"Fine," Scott says, more definitely. He looks at Isaac. "We were heading back to Stiles'. You coming or you need a ride home?" 

Isaac hesitates for longer than the question seems to deserve, hands tucked into his armpits as if he's cold. "I should get back," he says finally, gaze floating around the rousing parking lot and emptying sidewalk. 

"What, is Derek going to be sitting up waiting for you on the couch?" Stiles scoffs, jingling the change in pocket restlessly. Like Scott and like Isaac, his eyes keep jumping to each new source of movement. "I've seen your place; you guys don't even have a couch. And I _know_ you don't have a curfew. C'mon. It's summer."

Scott feels like Isaac wants to say yes, but he can't tell if it's something his senses are actually telling him or just imagined and Isaac shakes his head. "Nah, I told Derek I'd be back tonight," Isaac says, and Scott can taste the lie in the words, even if he doesn't know the _why_ behind them. "I can go myself, you don't have to drive me."

"No, it's fine," Scott says. Enough of the standing still; he starts walking toward where Stiles' parked his Jeep and the other two move with him.

"Hey! Don't you think you should ask the guy who actually owns and will be driving the car?" Stiles objects, before saying to Isaac, "It's fine, by the way. It's totally the other side of town, but it's fine." Dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper, Stiles says, "I hear Beacon Hills can be pretty dangerous at night."

They all laugh.

☽ ☾ 

"Derek!"

Derek startles out of a half-drowse he wasn't aware he'd fallen into when Isaac's voice echoes sharply off the concrete walls outside the train car. He's on his feet before he's awake enough to know what he's doing, and the book he was supposed to be reading falls to the floor with a dry splat. "Isaac?" The name tastes odd in his mouth, as if years have passed since he last said it, instead of hours.

"Derek!" Isaac comes leaping down the stairs. "I saw them! The Alphas!"

That snaps Derek the rest of the way awake. He charges out of the train car, meeting Isaac halfway across the room, grabbing Isaac by the forearm. "Where?"

"At the movie." Isaac's scent is metallic, electrical, with faint overlays of Stiles and Scott, the nasty fug of movie theater. "It was just two of them, I think. I only saw the two." He laughs, short and edgy. "I think they were there to see Transformers, too." Isaac laughs again, harder, "We've been jumping at ghosts for months, and _they're_ going to the movies!"

"Calm down," Derek says, infusing the words with a bit of his pull as Alpha, and though he feels anything but calm himself. He's got years of practice at faking his way through fear. He puts his hands on Isaac's shoulders, reinforcing and grounding through the touch. It also lets his scent rise and enfold Isaac, something he saw his mom do hundreds of times but didn't grasp at more than an instinctive level until Peter pointed it out to him. 

Nothing could cut that connection—mother and Alpha—and he'd craved after her touch as helplessly as Isaac craves after his…but it had always felt just a little less special after that, a little manipulative. 

He wonders if Isaac feels that, about him. 

In any case, Isaac both breathes out and straightens to his full height, the muddy roil of too many feelings clearing from his eyes, grayish in this light. 

"Tell me from the beginning." 

Isaac nods. "We were coming out of the theater. Scott and I smelled it at about the same time…"

Derek's fingers tighten, though he manages to control himself enough at the last second that he doesn't break bone or crush the flesh. "You were still with Stiles and Scott? Did they see them, too?" It'd been easy to put aside his doubts about whether to tell Scott while the Alpha Pack was just a ghost threat, but if it's real enough for Isaac to have seen them, identified them… It changes everything. 

But Isaac shakes his head, teeth picking at his lower lip. "I don't think so. At first it was just a scent, strange wolf, and then we saw Peter there…"

" _Peter_ was there?" Again, it's an effort not to clench his hands so tight that he hurts Isaac; Derek drops his arms, crosses them over his chest. 

Isaac laughs a third time, as ugly as the first two. "Yeah, guess it was Movie Night for all local lycanthropes. You should've come. The popcorn's shitty but who doesn't love Raisinettes?"

Derek struggles to make sense of it all, to arrange the pieces in some way that makes sense, that will tell him what to do next. "So, you didn't follow them." It's a statement not a question; there's no way Isaac could've trailed the Alphas with Scott and Stiles right there. "Did they follow you?"

"I don't think so." Isaac tucks both hands in his jeans pockets, shoulders folding in like origami. "Stiles drove me back—they insisted—and I kept looking, but I didn't see—sense—anything."

"Did they see you? Did they know you were there?" Isaac knew to look out, knew to be careful, but Scott, Stiles, they don't know anything. And if the Alphas decide to go after them first… 

"I don't know," Isaac says. "If we smelled them, they must have smelled us, right? But they didn't stop or anything, they didn't…" Isaac's face tightens as he searches for what he wants to say. "They didn't react," he says finally. "Not like Scott and I did, not like Peter did, when he spotted us. So, I don't know. I just don't know."

"What did they look like?" It's been years since he's seen Deucalion or Ennis and Kali and he was a kid at the time, with all the disdain of a teenager for the grown-ups around him; Derek doesn't trust that he'll know Deucalion or any of the others by face if he sees them again, though he thinks—hopes—his scent-memory will be stronger. Ennis, for sure. 

Isaac shrugs. "They were around our age, I think. Young, anyway. Twins." His eyes close and his face screws up, trying to fix the memory. "Kinda like if Matt Damon had two little brothers." He opens his eyes and shrugs again. 

The description doesn't mean anything, other than it's _not_ Deucalion, Ennis or Kali. It does remind him, however, that he has no real idea how big Deucalion's grown his abomination of a pack and that he can't count on them being able to see a threat coming at them before it's too late. 

"If we go back to the theater…maybe they'll be enough a scent trail that we can track them," Isaac proposes, hovering somewhere between hopeful and blood-thirsty. 

Derek shakes his head. "Any scent that wasn't obliterated by all the other people—and all their cars—would just lead us to a car. Or, a parking spot where a car used to be." He looks sharply at Isaac. "I don't want you anywhere near them."

"I was already near them," Isaac points out.

"I don't want you anywhere near them _again_ ," Derek says, baring his teeth for emphasis. "Isaac…this is my problem. You have to let me…"

"It's _our_ problem," Isaac insists, grabbing Derek's sleeve at the shoulder as if he's afraid Derek will physically shove him away. "I could _help_ , if you'd just let me…"

"I don't need your help!" Derek roars. 

The silence falls deep between them. Isaac doesn't retreat, but he shifts, mouth snapping tight and angling his body sideways. He's done it before and Derek doesn't need Peter's smarts to know why he does it: to present a smaller target. 

Derek drags both hands down his cheeks, exhaling noisily. "We will talk about this later. Right now, I need you to stay here…"

"You're leaving?" Isaac's defensive posture drops, his anxiety and anger beating at Derek's nose like a too-strong perfume. 

"I need to find out what Scott knows. And make sure that _none_ of you were followed."

"I can go with you—"

_"No."_ There's nothing close enough to punch so he pounds his fist into his own thigh, a satisfying explosion of violence and pain at the same time. It gives him the clarity to inhale and repeat, calmer, "No." Another deep, scalding breath. "You're safer here. _Stay here._ "

Derek brushes past Isaac. He's at the top of the stairs when he hears Isaac say, sullen and what only constitutes under his breath for non-werewolves: "I'm safer with you."

The bruise from his fist is already mostly healed, but Derek grinds his knuckles into its remnant anyway, secondary pain-rush. It's almost enough to blot out the voice that tells him: _That's not true. It's never been true._

☽ ☾ 

"Did you hear that?" Scott jerks out of a pretty deep sleep, the words mumbling off his lips before he's even sure if he's describing a dream or something real.

"Huh?" Though he was deep in it the second before, Stiles pauses his game immediately, cocking his head in a way that reminds Scott of a dog. "I don't hear anything."

"I don't either," Scott says, shaking his head. 'Anything' is, of course, a relative term these days, especially as he pushes his awareness of sound up and out until he can hear the sighing of wind through the leaves and the wind of crickets in the grass, the scratch of branches against the siding…

"Maybe you were dreaming?" Stiles says, though he doesn't unpause the game and his shoulders look like there are wire-hangers under the skin. 

"Maybe," Scott says, blinking and raking his nails across his scalp in an attempt to boot his brain up to full capacity. He feels like he's missing something, some important detail, too fuzzy to pin it down. "Yeah, I guess."

Wait. No.

Just a couple days ago, Stiles was bitching about his dad waking him up with the noise, trimming down the trees specifically because the branches were starting to skim the siding. So, if not branches…?

At the same moment that fear scrapes a chilly nail down Scott's spine, his spread out senses take in a new scent in the house, hot and feral…but familiar. 

_Derek._

"Scott?" Stiles may not be a werewolf, but his sense of danger is still as finely tuned as anyone Scott's ever known.

Scott relaxes like someone cut a knot holding him tight. "It's nothing," he says, shaking his head. 

Stiles looks at him, somewhere between skeptical and _really?_ For no logical reason, it makes Scott grin. 

"No, really." Scott tries to infuse the words with all his own relief that it really _is_ nothing, though when Derek, The Great American Werewolf Stalker became of no concern isn't anything Scott's ready to look at too deeply. Instead, he hops up from the couch, to Stiles' raised eyebrows. Scott gestures toward the stairs. "I'm just gonna…"

Stiles nods knowingly, thinking—as Scott means him to—that he's going to use the upstairs bathroom. Scott doesn't want to look too hard at the reasons for that, either. "Turn on the fan," Stiles says, wrinkling his nose before he unpauses and goes back to his game. "I'd say use the air freshener, but since you almost went into anaphylactic shock last time…"

"Yeah, Stiles, _okay_ ," Scott says as he climbs the stair. He really doesn't want to get into an inventory of his bathroom habits, with or without Derek as an eavesdropper. "We know way too much about each other's bowel movements," Scott mutters to himself, hopefully too low to be overheard, even by werewolf hearing. 

His foot barely touches the last step before Derek's hands are on him, jerking him up those last inches, spinning him around and, even expecting it, Scott only manages to keep his feet under him as Derek swings him into the wall with an _oof_. 

"You weren't at home," Derek growls and he sounds so unbelievably pissed about it that Scott racks his brain as to whether they had some plans he managed to forget. 

"I…no," Scott agrees, confused, looking from Derek's hard-set face to his hands clenched in Scott's shirt. "I'm…I'm here…"

Derek snarls and then he's pressing Scott into the wall with his entire body, his lips prying Scott's apart and his tongue shoving in, less a kiss than as if Derek's trying to imprint all the anger and frustration coiled so tight in him into Scott. 

It should bug him, the manhandling—and it does—but not so much, apparently, that he's going to push Derek away. In fact, certain parts of Scott seem to have an entirely different idea about what to do in this scenario, because he opens up and lets Derek maul their mouths and tongues together, fisting his hands in Derek's shirt at the waist to pull him in closer. 

By the time they pull apart to breathe, Scott's cock is a solid, aching line down the leg of his jeans. He whimpers when Derek touches it, soft slide of his fingertips, followed by the hard drag of the heel. 

"Derek…" It's not a whisper, it's barely a breath. 

Derek thumbs the button of Scott's jeans open, holding Scott's gaze like he's daring Scott to say something, stop him. When Derek starts dragging the zipper down, Scott wrenches his eyes away. They're right at the top of the stairs. In _Stiles' house._

"I can't…" Derek's fingers slip into Scott's shorts and wrap around his cock and Scott struggles not to let his voice wobble, not to let it slip into a range where Stiles might be able to hear. _"I'm not going to fuck you in Stiles' house!"_ he hisses. Is that seriously what Derek came here for?

"No," Derek agrees in that same soundless murmur, stroking slow and steady along the length of Scott's cock. He leans in, nuzzling and nipping Scott's collarbone, his throat. The first suck, sharp, no lead-up, makes Scott thrust hard into Derek's hand, mouth opening soundlessly and his chest locking around the moan he can't give voice to. Derek's next words are unintelligible, slurred out into Scott's skin.

"Wha—what?"

"I want," the heat of Derek's breath over his throat makes Scott shudder and writhe, "Suck you, let me suck you." He squeezes Scott's shaft hard, down at the base. 

All of Scott's blood spills south so fast, he thinks he might faint. Then, dragging at the last little bit of sanity as Derek starts to go to his knees, Scott catches the neck and shoulder of Derek's shirt. "Wait. Not here!" He tugs Derek toward the bathroom.

He's barely got the door shut behind them before Derek's pushing him up against it and dragging Scott's clothes down to his knees. Scott flails out with his right, slapping the light switch and the exhaust at the same time. The fan's old, loud and wheezing, hopefully enough to cover whatever noises he makes as Derek licks and bites his way up Scott's thighs. 

Derek's clearly not interested in a lot of foreplay, though; after a brief suck on Scott's nuts that threatens to unhinge Scott's legs entirely, Derek opens his mouth and takes Scott in, wet and hot, so hot. 

The back of Scott's head thunks into the door and he can't hear anything over the drums of his heart, beating in his ears as Derek goes down on him, so far down, almost to the root, and then a slow, toe-curling draw back. 

Scott's hands flutter uselessly: at his sides, a brief skim over the bristle of Derek's hair, and then the sharper prickle of his hollowed cheek. Finally, Scott just stuffs one fist between his teeth. Which really doesn't do much to disguise the choked moans coming from his throat, but it's better than the noises he wants to make as Derek makes a circle of his fingers at the base of Scott's cock, mouth and arm working Scott in tandem. 

His other hand's a problem, but gingerly, Scott lets it fall onto Derek's taut shoulder, feeling the flex and roll of muscle as Derek rocks on his knees. Heat pours off Derek through his shirt and Scott lets his thumb stroke down the big pulsing vein of Derek's throat, traces the hard contour of his Adam's apple, feeling that warmth without barriers, feeling Derek swallowing around him. 

Scott sort of expects Derek to growl or bat him away, but Derek's eyes open, the reddish hazel at their center brighter, almost Alpha red, and he hums, an encouraging vibration that shudders through Scott's dick and draws his balls up, tight and ready. Derek tips back, both angling his head into Scott's hand and letting Scott's cock slip that little bit deeper, into the clutching heat of Derek's throat. 

"Oh," Scott whispers, pretty much the only warning he can wring out as he tips over that edge between almost there and _there_ , "oh, uh, _oh_ …" Through the killing, breathless sweetness of coming, Scott's aware of his fingers tightening around Derek's throat, that he can fucking _feel_ Derek swallowing each spurt as it bursts out of him. Scott groans, nuts giving another pulse, an orgasm that seems like it'll never end. 

When it finally fades into the soft and tingly aftermath, Scott slumps against the door, feeling like a bunch of loose rubber bands in a boy-shaped skin and loosens his grip on Derek's throat.

"No." Derek's voice is _thrashed_ , hoarse and sticky. He covers Scott's fingers with his, pressing them into his neck while still looking at Scott, steady, expectant. 

Scott inhales, deep and sharp, until it crackles at the bottom of his lungs, but he leaves his hand where it is when Derek slides his fingers away to unbutton and unzip his jeans. _Oh God._

He wants to look at Derek's cock, fat, thick and hard, watch the head emerge red and wet from the foreskin, watch it slide through Derek's fist, but Scott can't look away from Derek's eyes, Derek's face. The way Derek keeps staring back, so familiar and a complete stranger at the same time. 

Is this what Derek came for? What Derek wants from him? And what the hell _is_ 'this'? What are they? 

Scott flexes his fingers, tightens his palm, experimentally, and Derek grunts, the hand he's not jerking himself with coming up to slap—grip—Scott's thigh, his thumb rubbing in the sweaty and spit-slick crease of Scott's leg. Derek's other hand moves faster and there's enough pre-come for Scott to hear it, silky and wet. He's nowhere near able to come again, but knowing it, what that sound is, what it means, goes through Scott in an aftershock anyway. He bites the inside of his lip. 

Derek's close. Scott can see it, in the slow flush, spreading through Derek's skin, the stuttering, harsh blurt of his breath, out his nostrils, through his half-open mouth, also darker, pinker. Derek's shaking, the little tremors before the big one, and he can't hold the same steady eye-contact, slow blinks that keep getting slower, longer. Finally, they slip shut. 

A growl rips out of Scott's chest and he jams the vee of his hand against the jut of Derek's jaw, tipping it back. Derek's eyes pop open and he grunts again, louder than before, loud enough that Scott puts his other hand over Derek's mouth, as warm come splashes his foot, between his toes. 

Scott doesn't know _what_ the hell came over him, but still, he holds Derek like that—and Derek lets him—until the last spasm. When Scott finally loosens his fingers and starts to pull back, Derek licks him, fast darts of his tongue, oddly puppyish, even more oddly hot. Instead of wiping it off on his jeans, Scott closes his fingers around it, dragging his thumb through the wetness, pressing it into his skin. 

A yawn comes up out of nowhere and hits Scott like a freight train, his jaw cracking. "I think," Scott says, dragging at the tangle of jeans and underwear around his knees, "I'd like to fall down now."

"Yeah." To Scott's surprise, Derek helps steady him as he slides down the door to the floor. Derek turns, sits next to him, a warm pressure and presence against Scott's left side. 

For a while, they just breathe like that. 

Then: "Oh, _fuck_. Stiles."

Derek lifts his head, eyes going distant. "Still playing his game."

Scott shakes his head. "No, I mean…yes, but _Stiles._ This is Stiles' house. I can't do this here."

Derek snorts, actually smiles. "I think it's already done."

"You know what I mean. This has _got_ to violate some kind of bro code."

Derek shrugs, as loose and loopy as Scott's ever seen him. It's not a terrible look on him. "You weren't home."

"And you were just so horny that you had to come and find me?" Scott laughs, he can't help it. 

The soft smile turns to a smirk. "Maybe I was."

Scott scoffs and rolls his eyes, looking away. 

"Maybe I just wanted to make sure you were okay."

Scott's neck twinges as he whips his head back to look at Derek again. Derek stares back. Finally, slowly: "Isaac told you about Peter."

Derek shrugs again. 

"He didn't do anything." Scott looks down. There's a spot of come on the leg of his jeans, drying, starting to flake. Whether it's his or Derek's is anyone's guess. "He was just…there."

Derek sighs, ruffling a hand through his hair. "Sometimes that's all it takes."

Scott glances sideways. "Should I be worried? Is he up to something?"

A third shrug. "Peter's always up to something. Nothing you need to worry about, though." He heaves to his feet, tucking his soft dick away, zipping up. 

That seems so much more athletic than anything Scott is capable of right now. And he's got school tomorrow. Still, he summons up the energy to roll his head back and look up at Derek. "But you'd tell me if there was something, right?" Derek doesn't say anything right away and Scott clarifies, "To worry about?"

Derek snorts and skates his eyes heavenward. "Yeah, Scott. I'd tell you."

☽ ☾ 

"Scott?"

He's dreaming about the rings again. He's really close, he can feel it; to knowing what they are, understanding what they mean. 

"Scott?"

But already, the dream is starting to thin around him. The voice, floating down, looking for him, is only accelerating the dream's destruction. In a moment, he'll be awake…

"C'mon, Scott, time to wake up…"

…and it'll all be gone again, a mystery still unsolved, crying out for his attention. He tries to resist the pull toward consciousness, but now someone's shaking him and the dream shreds, like an old silk scarf, and Scott rises through the pieces of it, unable to grasp anything. 

Scott uncrusts bleary eyes to find Stiles' dad looking back at him, tugging at his shoulder. "C'mon, Scott, wake up…"

Scott lets his eyelids slip down again and moans, "Don't wanna." He was so close to it, to understanding the rings…

"Yeah, well, I don't want to take a pi—" Stiles' dad gives a short cough then amends, "go to the bathroom with my son's best friend passed out behind me. C'mon Scott, it's morning time, get up."

This is a confusing enough collection of words that Scott stops trying to chase the riddle of his dream and opens his eyes again. This time, the world beyond Mr. Stillinski's face swims into vague focus and he realizes— _oh God_ —that he fell asleep in the Stillinski's bathroom. After… _After._

Scott shoots up into a sitting position, forcing Stiles' dad to awkwardly fall back, almost tipping over onto his butt from his crouch next to Scott. "Oh, God!" Scott says aloud, taking inventory as his mouth runs on, "I'm so sorry, Mr. Stillinski…"

His pants are mostly up and his dick's safely and decently covered by his shorts. Even if his jeans are still unzipped and gaping open, there's nothing to tell Stiles' dad what Scott was doing up here. Or who he was doing it with. 

"I don't know what happened, I was just so tired…"

If Stiles disapproves of Scott hooking up with Derek, Scott can't even think about Mr.— _Sheriff_ —Stillinski's reaction to it, even before he'd arrested Derek on suspicion of murder. If he knew Derek and Scott were messing around, Stiles' dad would put Derek _under_ the freaking jail. 

That entire train of thought turns to a knot so big and heavy Scott thinks he's going to puke when Sheriff Stillinski fixes him with a look and asks, "Do we need to talk about this, Scott?"

"I. Uh…"

"I mean, you don't smell like booze…but you did pass out in the bathroom, son."

All that terror sort of half-melts as it penetrates: Stiles' dad doesn't know what happened. He thinks Scott was _drinking_. "No!" he says quickly. Then, when Mr. Stillinski's brows furrow in over his nose, Scott amends, "No, we don't need to talk about it and no, I wasn't drinking." Then: "Neither of us was drinking," he adds. Because if he gets Stiles in hot water for some non-existent wrong, Stiles will kill him. 

Sheriff—because he's definitely the sheriff right now—Stillinski's eyes narrow. It's a look meant to ferret out the truth, but the real truth isn't something Scott's going to tell _anyone_ and the truth Stiles' dad is looking for is no truth at all. 

Of course, if he rules out drinking, Scott still needs another reason—a plausible reason—to have passed out in the Stillinski's bathroom. 

Scott gets his feet under him, slowly stands up, clutching his pants. "I shouldn't have had that hot dog at the movie theater."

Mr. Stillinski's face folds into more usual lines of tiredness and exasperation and he rolls his eyes, getting to his feet as well. "Aw, Scott, those things are like little sponges of bacteria."

"Yeah, I know." It's not hard for Scott to look embarrassed, not right now. "They just smelled so good…"

Mr. Stillinski sighs, but they're back on more familiar ground, and Scott can breathe again. The last several months have given him plenty of practice lying; he's getting better at it. 

He's not sure how he feels about that, but he doesn't have a lot of time to worry about it either, when he realizes what the presence of Stiles' dad in the house means. "Oh, God! What time is it?" 

"It's a little after six…"

Except if Stiles' dad is here, he knows: it's late. "I gotta go!" He brushes past Mr. Stillinski, leaping down the stairs and trying to remember where he left his cell phone. 

"…thirty." 

Stiles is knocked out on the sofa, the controller still clutched in his outstretched hand. The PS3 is still humming and making little disk-checking noises, though the TV's been turned off, probably by Mr. Stillinski. Scott sees his phone mixed in with the collection of remotes on the coffee table. He vaults the couch, scoops it up and looks around for his shoes while dialing his mom. 

"Mom," he says, when she picks up, "I'm so sorry, I overslept, I'm on my way…"

"Scott, Scott, slow down," his mom says. She sounds like she's chewing something. 

"I'm on my way right now." His shoes, weirdly enough, are right next to the front door. That never happens. Scott jams his feet into them and tears the door open, before remembering that his bike is around back. Dammit. He ducks back into the house, the door slipping from his fingers to slam loudly. 

Stiles' head pops up over the back of the sofa, glazed and half-asleep, but the readiness to flee bleeds off his skin like the bender fumes Mr. Stillinski had been sniffing for on Scott. 

Scott sighs. "It's just me," he says to Stiles, waving across his field of vision to make sure Stiles takes him in. "Your dad's home, everything's cool." 

He's not actually sure how much of that Stiles' registered, but it was enough that he gives Scott a sleepy-dopy nod and grin, sinking back out of sight. Scott resumes his beeline for the back door. His mom is saying something: "…to school and I'll see you later."

"What?"

"Oh, honey, _stop_ ," his mom says, not unkindly. "Listen. I know you are trying to win the award for Best Son Ever, but you really don't have to pick me up every morning from work."

"I don't mind." Scott wrestles with his bike lock, one-handed, which really isn't working at all.

His mom sighs. "I know you don't. That's not the issue. And I know that you worry about me. You don't know how much that means to me, kiddo. But I'm the mom here. And I don't want you running yourself into the ground when I'm perfectly capable of driving myself home. I'm okay."

Scott sighs, tossing down his keys and pressing his forehead into his upraised knee. "Mom—"

"Focus on school, Scott. Go to work. Hang out with your friends. Go get…crazy with Derek and Isaac. _Hey, maintain your lane, asshole!_ " Scott holds the phone away from his ear as his mom shouts at some other driver. "Sorry," she says when her attention returns to Scott. "Dipstick thinks he owns both lanes. Anyway. The point is, the whole point of this summer was for you to have a chance to focus on your schoolwork and your lacrosse game and work and your friends. And I don't want to get in the way of that."

"You're not!" Now that he's not moving, tiredness presses on Scott like a weight from above; he thinks it wouldn't be too hard to doze off right here, and wouldn't _that_ make Stiles' dad freak out? "Mom—"

"Scott. It's okay, honey, really. As much as I've enjoyed our time in the morning, I don't _need_ you to pick me up. Really." Through the tinny pick-up of the phone, he hears the quiet groan of the car's brakes and the thump of her putting the car into park. "See, I'm home already, no problems. And now I'm going to bed and you're going to school."

Scott sighs. "Okay, Mom."

"Oh! While I have you, though. Misty Ryan switched shifts with me—her oldest daughter moved the wedding again, now they're all going to go to Vegas and do it there—and so I'm actually going to get this weekend off. You want to go downtown for the fireworks?"

"Yeah, sure." Money being what it is, his mom ends up volunteering for a lot of holidays. He can't remember the last time they saw the fireworks together. "What about Stiles?" Stiles' dad works most of the same holidays—especially the Fourth— so they usually hang out. As nervy as Stiles' has been, Scott doesn't want to leave him alone while explosions go off in the sky. 

His mom scoffs. "Honey, you know I don't mind Stiles…though, don't tell him that I said that. Actually, I was thinking that since I'd have off, we could invite Derek and Isaac for dinner again, so maybe we all could go? That would be nice, wouldn't it?"

"Uh…" Scott tries to picture Derek and Isaac in among all the families—all the _kids_ \--and he can't tell if it's funny or horrifying. Maybe both. Horrifunny. "Yeah, sounds great."

"I'm not stupid, Scott. I know what that tone of voice means," his mom says, getting out of the car in a jingle of keys. "But do me a favor and ask them anyway?"

"Okay, Mom."

"Great! Hey…do you happen to know what kinds of books Derek likes? Is he into sci-fi or fantasy at all?"

Scott pulls the phone away from his face to give it a side-eye that he wishes his mother could see through the line. "Why would I know that?" he demands. "No, scratch that, why would I care? Why do _you_ care?"

His mother sighs. "It was just a question, Scott. Don't make too much out of it. It's not important, anyway." She sighs again, which turns into a yawn. "I'll talk to you later. Have a good day at school."

She hangs up on him and Scott's left to stare at his phone and bike, too tired to even make sense of the things racing through his head. Finally, he gets up and goes to the back door, taking care to knock this time. 

Mr. Stillinski must have been in the kitchen, because it takes him no time to come to the door, a mug of coffee in his free hand. The milky-bitter aroma catches at Scott's stomach, making it snarl with hunger at the same time it pinches with queasiness. "Hey, Scott," Mr. Stillinski says, making it a question as he steps aside to let Scott in.

"Could I take a shower here?" Scott asks, not stepping over the threshold. "My mom, she's home already and I…"

Mr. Stillinski rolls his eyes and slings his arm around Scott's shoulders. "Get in here."


	3. July/August

"You know, this isn't why I came," Scott says.

"No, you came because of my mouth on your dick," Derek says, flopping on his back next to Scott on the floor. 

Scott wrinkles his nose, but he can't help but laughing, too, relaxed and oddly comfortable in the nest of blankets and pillows on the train car floor. It smells like Derek here. Isaac, too, and even more faintly of Boyd and Erica, but mostly Derek. 

It's true what he said: sex with Derek hadn't been on his mind when he'd come to the depot, but it'd only been a handful of minutes before he couldn't think about anything else, finding Derek alone, half-naked and sweaty from exercising. Derek definitely hadn't been at all unwilling. 

So. This is a thing that they do, now. 

"My mom wants you and Isaac to come to dinner on Saturday," Scott says finally, less bothered by the idea of it all—sex with Derek, joking with him, actually enjoying his company—than he thought he'd be, even though he's been the one trying to chase peace between them. "Maybe come to the fireworks with us, after." He bumps Derek's outstretched knuckles with his own. 

"I don't like fireworks," Derek says. All the warmth that was in his voice freezes over. It takes Scott all of two seconds to figure out why, slapping his palm into his forehead.

"Sorry," Scott says. Which is really inadequate to express how crappy he feels about it, but he knows he'll also be lucky to get Derek to accept that much. 

Derek makes a small noise, denial, dismissal, staring up at the car's ceiling. 

"The fireworks aren't mandatory or anything," Scott offers, turning on his side, pillowing his head on his arm. "Just come to dinner. I'll square it with my mom, she won't bug you about it." 

Derek makes another sound, less identifiable than the first.

Everything about Derek is different than with Allison—which is exactly what Scott wants and needs—but the sharpness of it, the difference, hits Scott hard all of a sudden. 

If it was Allison lying next to him right now, he'd put out his hand to touch her. For her comfort, for his, some combination of the two. Just to touch her. With Derek…Scott thinks he'd like to touch him, but outside the very narrow confines of when they're actually having sex, he doesn't know if he can. If he has permission for that. It's a weird feeling, that a guy could pretty much put his tongue up your ass, but just petting him might get your arm broken. 

"Come to dinner," Scott says again, gathering up his nerve and reaching out, spreading his fingers over Derek's side and feeling the soft bellow of his breathing, the dull pulse of Derek's heart. He pushes up, across Derek's belly, and tries not to let his shock show, when Derek momentarily tenses—and Scott tenses with him—and then goes limp, letting Scott. 

"Yeah, okay," Derek says, completing Scott's descent into madness. 

"Really?"

"I said so, didn't I?" Derek growls the words, but—and it might just be Scott's imagination and post-sex endorphins—it feels like fake anger, like when dogs snarl in play, tails still up and wagging. 

"Yeah," Scott agrees, mostly to say something. He circles the shallow divot of Derek's navel, traces the sparse trail feathering down from it. "Okay, good. Good."

"Your mom's a good cook," Derek says, still in that same _wanna make something of it?_ voice. 

"She is." Scott contemplates Derek's dick. He's touched it before, held it, put it in his mouth, but always as a means to an end, chasing pleasure or returning it. Lying soft against Derek's thigh, outside the hastily parted **V** of Derek's jeans, it's a different enough creature that Scott's unsure of the limits again, what's allowed. "Can I… Is this okay?" 

Derek shrugs, eyes closed. "It's fine."

"I noticed the other day that one of my scars is gone." Scott thumbs the fat, branching vein on the top of Derek's cock. "My dad was trying to teach me how to ride a bike and he let go and I wasn't ready…slammed right into the curb and went over the handlebars. My mom was _pissed_ but she stitched me up herself. Three stitches." The memory itself isn't a great one, but Scott had been so proud of those stitches, remembers showing them off to Stiles, his great war wound. 

"When I looked, I noticed a couple other scars are gone too. They're healing, aren't they?"

"Yeah," Derek says, soft-voiced, like he's half-asleep. "Probably."

It makes sense. Given what Peter came back from—and no matter what he looks like now, Peter's half-burned face is always going to fill Scott's nightmares—Scott's few scars are small potatoes. 

"Is my foreskin gonna grow back, too?" Scott scoots closer, lifts Derek's dick and wraps his hand around it. 

"I don't know." Derek shrugs unhelpfully. "Maybe?" His eyes open a crack, glancing sideways at Scott. "You're weirdly interested in foreskins."

Heat blooms through Scott's face and he starts to let Derek go, but Derek puts his hand over Scott's. They stare at each other for a couple seconds and then, slowly, Derek lets his hand fall away. Scott leaves his where it is, Derek's cock warm and thick against his palm. 

Derek sighs. "Contrary to what you might think, I don't actually know everything there is to know about werewolves, Scott."

Scott snorts. "You definitely act like you do."

Derek rolls his head toward Scott, the corners of his mouth pricking upward. "How the hell else am I supposed to get you to listen to me?"

"I listen!" Scott protests. "I just don't always…"

"Obey?" Derek's eyebrows arch.

Scott laughs. "Okay, I am definitely not very good at the obeying, this is true. I am not an obey-er, ask my mom."

Derek's eyes crinkle, though he doesn't laugh out loud. "I guess I will. Hang on a sec." He chafes Scott's hand off of him and then lifts up enough to get his pants out from under his ass, sitting up long enough to slide them down his legs, toe off his shoes, and then kick his clothes away. He lies back with a pleased sigh, wriggling deep into the blankets, then waves at his naked form. "You may resume."

Scott snort-laughs, but he does go back to touching Derek, this time homing in on Derek's thigh, so heavily-muscled for all its relative thinness, sheathed in a heavier coating of hair than anywhere else on his body. 

"You should get an apartment." Scott traces the long muscle of Derek's thigh and tries to remember what it's called. He can see the picture pretty well, but he can't remember any of the parts' names. 

Derek opens just one eye this time. "Oh, yeah?"

Scott shrugs. "You're not going back to the house. And this…it's okay, but you and Isaac can't live here forever. And you just got the RAV…you're building something. You're building your new life. And, like, something for the pack."

"Not much of a pack," Derek says and then his jaw squares and gets tight, molded right to the bone.

"Well, that's why I said an apartment," Scott offers, skipping around the giant DMZ of Derek expanding his pack. It's the last thing he wants to think about, honestly, and Derek hasn't given any indication he's planning on it even with the Missing Person posters for Boyd and Erica all over town. "You and Isaac don't need a lot of space, um. Yet. Just someplace that's yours and to hang out. Someplace you have a right to." 

Even as soon as last year, he and Stiles would've loved the warehouse as someplace cool and secret to hang out. But the thought of actually trying to live here is a lot less appealing and there's enough ways in and out that Scott worries what'll happen if hunters ever track Derek or Isaac back here. 

Not just because Derek is his main source for anything supernatural; and not just because Scott, in general, disapproves of killing other living things. Not anymore. 

"Besides," he says breezily, taking Derek's cock into his hand again, "this would be a lot easier on a bed, in a bedroom."

The look Derek gives him is almost pure wide-eyed shock, but it melts fast into a grin, bigger and brighter than Scott's ever seen from Derek. It's weird to realize that, to feel like it's an _occasion_ , just because Derek's grinning at him, but Scott can't lie to himself: that's exactly what it feels like, a prize he's won, or like finding money on the street. 

He should probably get home; if his mom's not up already, she will be soon and wondering where he is, and he's got homework, so much homework. But it's like, as long as he doesn't get up, doesn't move, none of that other stuff exists. Or if it exists, it exists outside of this bubble. This warm, safe bubble, full of orgasms. 

"So, you've done it before?" Scott asks, letting the ball of his thumb work the soft yield of Derek's piss slit. It opens and closes like a mouth, an observation he's made about his own dick before, but that seems different when it's someone else's. "Like, with guys?"

The look Derek slants at him tells Scott that his unbelievably dopy phrasing didn't go unnoticed. "Yeah. I've done 'it'. With guys." Derek tucks both hands behind his head and goes back to staring at the ceiling. 

Okay, so Derek's mocking him. But, he's also answering the question, so maybe Scott can put up with some teasing. Not like it's a new thing for them. "Have you done it a lot?"

Derek shrugs. "What's a lot?"

"I don't know." Now Scott shrugs. "And you really like it? I mean…it's that good?"

Derek turns his head and looks at Scott, a deep look, a searching one, nostrils flaring as he sucks up Scott's scent too. Scott doesn't know what Derek's looking for, exactly, but he waits it out and finally, Derek says, "Not always."

Scott tries mightily, but he can't help the little sliver of smile that creeps across his face at Derek's unspoken implication, that he thinks it'll be good with Scott. Derek snorts and puts his palm over Scott's face, pushing him away. Scott falls onto his back, but he leaves his fingers in a circle around the thick base of Derek's cock, squeeze and release, squeeze and release, thinking about it. 

"Allison—" he starts, and then he has to stop, waiting for the stab, right through his heart. It's always sharp and leaves him breathless, and this time is no exception. Then he goes on. "She's the first person I ever…you know. But I did have… There was this other girl she kinda ran with me and Stiles for a while. And I knew she liked me." Scott stops again, considers, a little surprised at how much this memory hurts, even now. "I mean…she was my friend. I wasn't faking that." Scott sighs. "I don't know. I tried to like her like she liked me, I just didn't. But I was a jerk. I wanted…" 

Experience. The thrill of being seen by someone, liked by someone, finally. Getting to touch someone. Sexually, sure; the day Scott first got to see and touch boobs is etched permanently into deeply fond memory, but also the little stuff: getting to hold hands with someone, when she'd curl into his shoulder, like a couple from the movies. Kissing. 

Scott shrugs. "She would've done it with me. Sex." They'd been right on the verge, stripped down to just their underwear. Scott sighs, scratching his free hand through his hair. "And I just…I knew I didn't want to. Not with her. Not for my first time and not with someone that I didn't _really_ care about."

He'd sort of wished he'd gone through with it, sometimes. Not because he regrets the decision—to wait, to save it until it would actually _mean_ something to him—but because then he maybe would've had the experience to be less fumbling with Allison, less _new_. But that thinking just makes him feel worse about the whole thing, because it's a pretty selfish and jerky thought on top of some pretty selfish and jerky behavior. And sex with Allison… It had been worth the wait. 

"My first time was with Kate," Derek says and he says it so dully, so flatly, that at first Scott doesn't get the gist of it, what Derek's _saying_. Then, when it hits him, when all the scattered pieces come together at that one point—Kate, Kate Argent—Scott can't really react, because he can't freaking _move_.

Ho-ly shit, Kate Argent. Kate freaking Argent. And Derek. Oh, man, it makes such sick, terrible sense, but _wow_. Wow. 

Wow.

Scott scrambles for something to say, something that doesn't sound as tacky as the THX surround sound of _wow_ going through his brain, but apparently silence is the right thing, because while Scott's still trying to figure it out, Derek goes on:

"After that…there wasn't anybody for a while. We were moving a lot but…" Derek shrugs and even as slow on the pick up as he can be, Scott can fill in the blanks on that. His whole family had just died and Kate was the one who'd engineered and executed the whole thing. 

"But there's been others since then," Scott points out. "Not all of them could've been…psycho killers."

The smile Derek gives him is flat and humorless, pretty much the exact look Scott gets in his head when he reads the word 'wolfish' (which comes up more than you'd think). "No," he agrees, "not all of them."

"Well, _that_ sounds ominous." He wonders what Derek would do if Scott moved between his legs, if they're still in place where it's okay. His mouth is simultaneously dry and wet with the desire to taste.

When Scott pushes up onto his knees, Derek's gaze turns opaque and sharp, but Scott also sees the way Derek quietly relaxes when Scott shoves at Derek's knee, for Derek to make room for him between his legs. 

Derek shrugs. "I was basically having sex with people for two reasons; because they would or because we needed something from them."

"What do you mean?" Scott closes his eyes and breathes in the thick, heavy scent on Derek's thighs, the hot creases of his groin. 

"I mean a two-person pack is only barely a pack at all. A two-person pack without a territory is even less than that. We had…nothing. And when you have nothing, you have to bargain for everything. Nothing comes for free."

Though Derek's voice is both steady and even, there's a jaggedness underneath that distracts Scott from his exploration. Bracing himself on one of Derek's thighs, he glances up. Derek looks back, like he's daring Scott to ask. 

"You didn't," Scott says, because he can't believe it, not really. 

"And you know that?" Derek's eyebrows flex, the only part of his face that moves at all. 

And…no. Scott doesn't know that, not for sure. "But Laura…" She was his sister, his last living relative. Surely, she wouldn't have…

It's the wrong thing to say; Derek just walls up tighter behind his face. "Laura did what she had to do." Derek slides away from Scott, rolls up into sitting. Slowly, Scott sits up, too. "We both did."

Scott doesn't know what to say to that, can't imagine the circumstances under which he'd let someone fuck him for…for what? Shelter? Protection? Money? He can imagine even less the circumstances under which he'd let Stiles or his mom do it, take that hit for the two of them. 

As if he senses what Scott's thinking, Derek says, "Not all of us get the option of fucking our One True Love." He gives Scott that hard, wolfish smile again. 

Scott knows Derek's trying to rile him up. He knows that. But he doesn't know why and frankly, he doesn't feel like spending the brain power to figure it out. The fun-and-sex part of the afternoon is clearly over and—other than delivering his mom's invitation—that's the part of this he was in for. 

"See, this," Scott sighs, pushing up to his knees and scrabbling for his clothes, "is why people think you're a jerk."

"Oh? Why's that?"

"Because you're a jerk," Scott says easily, evenly, as he shrugs into his shirt. Then, so Derek doesn't think that being an ass gives him an out—because he and Stiles have played this game before—Scott adds, "I'll see you at dinner."

☽ ☾ 

"I'm so hungry," Isaac moans, when they pull up to the McCall's. "I hope the food's ready."

Derek's stomach growls its agreement. Beacon Hills takes July 4th weekend very seriously; the entire town is wrapped in a maddening perfume of grilling meat, impossible to escape, and Derek feels like he's been sucking back drool since he woke up that morning. "Yeah." 

Man, he hopes dinner is ready. 

"Did you know Stiles was coming?" Isaac jerks his chin at the Jeep, parked less than a foot in front of them. 

"No." Derek had noticed it, of course. He parked right behind the damn thing. It just didn't seem like there was a whole lot to say about it, and even less that he wanted to say to Isaac. Considering how he and Scott left things, it's not surprising. 

The dinner, it's Melissa's thing. She's doing it for Scott but it's not Scott's party, it's just thrown in his honor. And Stiles is Scott's best friend. That he drives Derek nuts is probably just an added bonus. 

Given Melissa's reaction to the venison, Derek had gone with a more human host gift this time, in the form of two pies from what had been their favorite bakery, one apple and—Derek's secret favorite—one with sweet summer strawberries. While he's getting them carefully out of the back seat, an old, red Honda CRV pulls up behind the RAV. 

All at once people come boiling out of the McCall front door, Scott in the lead, as he avoids the front steps, leaping straight to the sidewalk. Melissa follows more sedately behind, the big smile on her face a lot more welcoming than whatever the expression brewing on Scott's. 

Scott races up to the RAV, hands slamming on the hood to check his headlong rush. Derek growls. "I had _nothing_ to do with this," Scott says, in a garbled and breathless undertone. "Okay? Nothing."

"What's 'this'?" Isaac asks for both of them, as Melissa waves—not to Derek and Isaac, but to the woman getting out of the CRV. 

"Alex, hi! So glad you could make it!"

Derek has a horrible feeling about all of this. 

"Hi," the new arrival—Alex—says. She's tall and solidly built, with streaks of dark purple and indigo that blend nearly invisibly with her short black hair. Light brown skin could be any number of nationalities and he can't see her eyes, hidden behind rock-star sunglasses. She's mainly wreathed in the same ingrained hospital scents as Melissa—illness, disinfectant, soap and bleach—under a newer, fresher coat of body wash, "unscented" deodorant and lotion. "I'm not late, am I? I didn't notice I didn't have enough mayonnaise until I was halfway through making the potato salad and then the store was jam packed." 

"No," Melissa avers, "you're right on time. See? Derek and Isaac just got here." She gestures toward them and Derek finds himself freezing, pies in hand, under that collective regard. "Oh," she says, looking at the bakery boxes in Derek's hands, "what's that?"

"Pie…?" Derek says uncertainly, trying to parse the terrifyingly bright cheerfulness on the surface of Melissa's voice versus the mellower and more genuine pleasure he hears beneath it. 

"How thoughtful!" Melissa's already wide smile elongates. "You're always such a thoughtful guest, isn't he, Scott?"

"Uh…" Scott looks as shell-shocked as Derek feels. "Yeah!"

Not that it's any consolation at all. Why does being 'civilized' and making friends have to come with so much _stupidness_ attached?

Melissa glances at him for a second, before making a motherly tutting noise. "This won't do. Scott, could you go and check on the grill, make sure the meat isn't burning? And take Stiles with you. Isaac, you take the pies inside. You can unbox them in the kitchen and then put the pies on the sideboard in the dining room, thanks!"

_I'm sorry,_ Scott mouths at Derek, before peeling away, back toward the house. Isaac strips Derek of the pie boxes and follows promptly on Scott's heels.

Derek gives a moment to reflect on how thoroughly he'd let Melissa snow him at that first dinner. She'd been so kind and unobtrusive and he'd let himself get lulled. But now, as she marshals the three boys and cuts him out of the group with an easy, brutality worthy of any apex predator, Derek sees the real Melissa McCall, far more wolfish than her son.

Derek would probably admire her for it, if he wasn't so busy hating her, instead. 

"Alex, this is Derek, he's, um," Melissa's nose wrinkles slightly. "He's been mentoring Scott, helping him get his life better organized, now that he's got so much going on." 

Alex nods at Derek, tipping her sunglasses off her face and replacing them with a boxy pair of black-framed glasses. "Hi, nice to meet you." She reaches out a hand to Derek, her crooked grin and the slight cinnamon puff of embarrassment drifting from her skin showing she feels as awkward about this as he does. 

Derek closes the car door and then takes the few steps to take her hand. Strong grip, solid shake. Though her facial expression doesn't change, her pulse/heartbeat does, and the cinnamon scent deepens, intensifies into your basic _wow, he's hot_. 

They can't help it, he knows that. Because they don't smell as keenly as he does, humans just don't know how much of their emotions they wear on their skin and even if it wasn't rude beyond belief to mention it, that's not a subject Derek ever wants to bring up. 

He wonders if things with Scott have been so easy to fall into because Scott never looks at him like that, has never given off that dry and impersonal spicing of lust, of acquisition. 

"Derek, you can help Alex with her potato salad, can't you?" Melissa asks, with sitcom innocence-brightness, smiling at them both. Alex makes a brief, protesting noise, but Melissa rides ruthlessly right over her, "It can go right on the dining room table, no hurry, I've just got a couple of things I need to check inside."

Melissa moves quickly when she wants to.

"Wow." Alex hip checks the driver's door shut. "That was singularly the most horrifying set-up I've ever been subjected to. And that includes the time my grandmother called to tell me she was arranging a marriage for me back in Korea." Her mouth flexes. "I'm so sorry about that. I didn't know, when Melissa invited me over." 

Derek shrugs. "It happens."

His family had been like this, poking their paws in every aspect of his life and each other's. Even when it had just been him and Laura, she'd had her input and opinion on every decision he'd made and every action he'd taken. 

He doesn't love that Melissa is the same way, but it's at least familiar. On the other hand, it gnaws in the back of his mind: does Melissa know something, that she's throwing Alex in front of him like bait? A distraction from younger, more vulnerable, prey? 

For the first time since he woke up that morning, Derek's stomach shrinks and sours. 

Alex sighs, raking her fingers through her hair in a way that shows its spikiness doesn't come from product. "Yeah, but it happens to me too much," she says. "It's enough to give a girl a complex, that everyone I know seems to think I need some guy to complete my life." She shifts stance, crossing her arms over her chest. "If I was a dude, would people be so interested in my love life?"

Derek raises his eyebrows. 

"Heh." Alex's grin is sheepish, but in a way that lights up her face. "Okay, yeah. Fine." She holds out a hand. "Okay, though, but this is what I'm saying: you're doing fine, right? I mean, I imagine if you wanted a relationship, you'd have no problem getting someone, right? I mean…look at you." She gestures up and down at him. "So if you're not in a relationship, then you must not want to be in one. And there's nothing wrong with that!" Her arms spread wide. "I mean, why is it so terrible to not want to be in a relationship? I get laid! I _like_ getting laid! And the rest of it…" 

Alex breaks off, slow blooming horror on her face and in her scent. "….and, I just met you," she says, pinching the bridge of her nose and squinching up her face. "Wow. Okay. So. Inside? We should probably get inside, right?"

Derek assumes the big green glass bowl in the front seat of the CRV is the potato salad in question. Clear, unequivocal tasks. He goes around to the passenger side of the car and grabs it off the seat. 

And they go inside.

☽ ☾ 

When Derek thinks he can face all the people hanging out in the McCall's back yard again, he opens the bathroom door, to find Scott standing just on the other side.

"No," Derek says immediately, crossing his arms. "Absolutely not. Not with your mom right outside."

"What…?" Scott's face scrunches with confusion, giving Derek enough time to feel like an idiot about his assumption. Scott's brows go high over widening eyes, nose wrinkling when he gets it. "Augh. No. My mom's right _outside_."

No, of course not. It's the kind of thing Kate would do—would get off on—not Scott. Scott who, despite the recent Humpty Dumpty of his life, is a better son than Derek ever managed to be, even before the fire.

"So you just like listening to me piss?" Truth be told, he wasn't using the bathroom, he just needed to get away from the chattering crowd for a couple minutes of quiet, but he's not going to tell Scott that. 

"I wasn't _listening,_ " Scott denies, the crinkle of his nose deepening. "I wanted to talk to you, before you came back out."

Derek leans his shoulder against the doorjamb. "Okay, talk."

"I'm surprised you're still here, actually," Scott says, his tone seeming to imply he didn't mean to say the words aloud. "I thought I'd come back here and find you'd taken off."

He'd thought about it. 

"This is what you wanted to talk about?" Derek flexes his still-crossed arms, glances to make sure no one else is there, even though the rest of his senses tell him very clearly there isn't. 

"I…no." Scott hunches his shoulders, tucks his hands deep in his pockets. "I just… I'm sorry about Alex. I didn't know that's what my mom had in mind. I would've stopped her, if I knew. She didn't…Alex doesn't know about us, my mom didn't tell her."

Derek had assumed that, mainly because he didn't think Melissa would put Scott in that kind of danger. He'd been more worried that she knew about him and Scott, but five minutes into it, Derek had known that couldn't be the case. There's a fierce bitch wolf under Melissa's skin and if she knew—if she even thought—Derek's…doing what he's doing with her son… No. Even if she could hide it, she wouldn't. Not that. She'd tear him apart, not set him up on a date. 

"You said that already," Derek points out. 

"No, yeah, I know, I just…" 

It would probably not amuse Scott to know how much fun it is to watch him fumble for words, but Derek is also curious. Sneaky sex in the bathroom, Derek gets that. Scott's motives, on the other hand, tend to be a lot more opaque. 

"I wanted you to know it wasn't me, that I didn't set you up or get my mom to set you up. It wasn't me." Scott shrugs carelessly, but his face is earnest, big brown puppy eyes asking Derek to believe him. 

"Okay." Derek lets the word trail off into a semi-question, not sure why it matters so much. Yeah, it was weird and annoying to start with, but after her initial, slightly surreal hard sell, Melissa throttled back on her Cupid act and he gets the impression Alex might want to throw a fuck his way, but she's definitely not pursuing it in any way that he can tell and he's generally got a lot of experience at being chased. He shrugs. "It's fine." he says.

"Oh." Scott says it like a glob of phlegm he's hocking up from the back of his throat. "I thought you'd be pissed."

"Do you _want_ me to be pissed?"

"No." Scott shakes his head vigorously and Derek is stuck on puppy metaphors, thinking he looks like he's shaking water off after an unwanted bath. "No, of course not."

"Okay, well then, what?"

"So you like Alex, then?" Scott takes his hands out of his pockets, can't decide what to do with them, and rams them back in, the denim bulging in the shapes of his fingers. 

"She's okay." It's an odd, nonsensical question. Then, realizing this time he's the one being slow on the uptake: "Are you jealous?" 

It doesn't come out drawling and disinterested the way it should, the way he wants it to; instead, it's blurting and shocked, because yeah, okay, he and Scott have been having sex, but—and this is the part that's really embarrassing—he doesn't think of Scott like that. 

"What? No." 

Not wanting to give Scott the time to evade, Derek moves fast, snatching a handful of Scott's hair and snapping his head back so Derek can take a deep, long whiff from Scott's collar bone to his ear. "You smell jealous," Derek murmurs against the soft skin behind the lobe.

Scott pushes Derek away, not hard but not before Derek feels him shiver. "I do not!"

Derek smirks. 

"It's just weird, don't you think?" Scott frowns. "She works with my mom, she's my mom's friend." The frown deepens as he looks like he's searching for more words, but in the end, Scott grimaces and shrugs, saying, "It's just weird."

"We're not dating," Derek reminds Scott. "You're not my boyfriend. You don't get a vote in what I do with my dick."

"I know that!" Scott says hotly, doing his own spot-check to make sure they're still alone, still uninterrupted. "I know you're going to do what you want. I just…"

"You don't want me to sleep with her," Derek says, slow and a little numb. It doesn't feel like a shock, exactly, but he doesn't have a better word for what it does feel like, the axis on which everything him-and-Scott related rests turning, reversing gravity from under his feet. 

Scott shoulders slump and instead of meeting Derek's eyes, his gaze hovers somewhere in the vicinity of Derek's Adam's apple. "No," he agrees. "I don't."

Derek feels like he needs to do a lot more thinking about things than he has time to do with Scott looking at him and half of Beacon Hills waiting for the two of them in the back yard. Derek doesn't even know where to start, anyway. He settles for the truth. "I wasn't going to," he offers. It feels clumsy, achy, like a muscle he doesn't use. 

Scott swallows, loud enough that Derek would be able to hear it without a wolf's ears. "I know this is just temporary," Scott says, stiltedly, "I just… The idea of it…"

"I'm not going to fuck her," Derek repeats, not nearly as angry as his voice comes out. "I'm not…" He pinwheels on the edge of admission, horrified, unsure of what lies at the bottom of the abyss. His self-destructive tendencies go deep, though. "There isn't anyone else right now."

Consistent with the contrariness of his nature, Scott doesn't go for Derek's exposed jugular, eyes brightening with such a naked relief that Derek cringes just for witnessing it. "Oh. Uh, yeah. Um. Me, either." 

Derek looks at Scott. "Yeah, Scott, I know."

Scott's gaze dips lower, around diaphragm level as he nods, flushing. "Yeah. I just… That whole you're having sex with someone, you're having sex with everyone _they've_ had sex with…"

"Yeah, Scott, I get it," Derek interrupts, because they do not need to open the door to another discussion of his screwed up sexual history, he gets it already, thanks. 

Scott nods again. The silence draws out long enough that Derek starts to wonder whether Scott's rethinking that whole sex in the bathroom thing. Then: "It's not just that." 

He says it quietly enough that Derek only 'hears' it on replay. 

Derek sighs. "Spit it out."

Scott sighs deeply, but his eyes square up with Derek's again, head on. "Look, don't laugh, okay? And don't get pissed. I know I don't get a say in what you do, it's just...maybe you can do it, maybe you know how to, but I can't…juggle like that…"

Juggle? But, like his hearing, understanding comes belatedly, based more on what he knows about Scott than the words themselves. Scott, the romantic, the idealist; Scott with his one Great, True Love that he's hanging onto, tooth and nail. Of course monogamy is an issue for him.

And really, of Scott's many annoying traits, it's one that Derek can't make fun of. It's not part of his biological nature to mate for life any more than it is a real wolf's, (or a human, for that matter) but he remembers how badly his teenaged self longed after the idea of it: _mate_. And he may have given up on it being something that's ever going to happen to him, but contrary to what Scott seems to think, he doesn't like 'juggling' any more than Scott does. It feels too much like sharing his body out like scraps. 

"I'm not…" Derek starts, but the place that sentence ends feels too close to the bone, a bloody, pulpy place he doesn't want Scott poking at. "I'm the Alpha of a new pack," he says instead, "I don't have time…" He folds his shoulders, not quite a shrug. "There isn't anyone else. I'm not looking for that right now." 

Scott relaxes and Derek wants to push his face back against Scott's throat, sniff and lap up that sweetness for himself. At the same time, all of this is starting to feel a little too sweet, cloying. So he adds, "If that situation changes, I'll let you know."

☽ ☾ 

Scott has one thousand, one hundred and eighteen pictures of Allison—alone or with other people—not including the ones that disappeared from his Snapchat account. He's been through them all already and he's midway through a second run, even though his head is pounding and tiredness drags at his bones like weighted chains.

This one's from the winter formal. You can't see Allison's dress in the picture, but Scott remembers its tissue fineness, the way the silver captured the light, drawing him in like the full moon.

Slow fade.

This one was taken in the cafeteria. Allison's tired of him taking pictures, tired in general, and it shows, her eyes and mouth unsmiling as she props up her head with one fist, the cascade of her hair almost hiding her popped middle finger. 

Scott taps the mouse pad, advancing the slideshow himself. 

This one is from one of the street fairs downtown. Allison isn't even looking at him, or the camera; he forgets now who she was looking at. Lydia, or maybe Stiles. Stiles seems like a good candidate, because she's laughing. There's sunlight in her hair, bringing out all the different colors, and Scott's heart feels like it could shatter if he breathes wrong. 

Scott hits pause, holding the picture there, keeping the slideshow from moving on. She's so _beautiful_. It doesn't even seem like she should be able to exist, period, let alone exist in the same world as him. 

Of course, that world's a lot bigger now that she's on the other side of it from him. 

Scott sighs, unpauses the slideshow. He doesn't have school tomorrow, but he should get some sleep anyway. On the other hand, as the street fair picture trades out for a picture of Allison studying, a thick tendril of hair wound around her forefinger, gouging himself with all his memories and longing for Allison is still a billion times more preferable than thinking about what the hell just happened with him and Derek. 

He doesn’t feel like his feelings for Derek have changed. Or, since they obviously _have_ , even before you bring their dicks into the picture, he doesn’t feel like he wants to date Derek any more than he ever has. This little wallow proves that: he wants Allison. 

But he can’t deny the steaming hot rush of…something, at the thought of Derek maybe being interested in Alex, as much as he’d like to pretend he’d felt no such thing. He can still feel it, a little pulsing beacon, deep in the muscle of his chest. And no amount of staring at pictures of Allison is making it go away. 

Scott sighs and closes the laptop’s lid and sets it aside on the floor. He’s clearly just too tired to think rationally about this. 

Crawling into bed is awesome. So awesome he doesn’t know why he didn’t do this hours ago. 

The point is, Scott thinks, already starting to drift as he snuggles his face deeper into the pillow, is that it’s not about Derek. Derek could be anyone, anyone Scott’s having sex with…

_…great sex, amazing sex, really freaking awesome sex…_

…it’s just that sex is a thing that happens between two people and it should stay between two people, as far as Scott’s concerned. Adding more people… It just becomes more complicated. Less special. 

Even with someone that isn’t _The_ someone…it should be special, it should mean something, not just meat. 

And _that’s_ the heart of it, Scott thinks, the realization flushing through him, warm and rosy and afterglow sweet. It’s not that his feelings for Derek are different, so much as Scott can’t treat anyone he’s dealing with as disposable, as unimportant. Derek isn’t Allison, but he is someone. It isn’t in Scott to treat him like no one. 

With that resolved satisfactorily to his niggling brain, Scott looses his last fingertip grip on wakefulness and lets himself fall all the way down.

It feels like he’s only just closed his eyes when the presence of another person—another scent—in the room makes him open them again. 

Daylight streams through the windows golden and thick as syrup, showing his eyes were shut a lot longer than he thought, and Derek is leaning against the wall next to his window. 

Scott groans and tugs the pillow over his head. "No," he slurs, barely understandable, even to himself. "It’s my one day to sleep in…"

"It’s after ten," Derek says, dragging the pillow out of Scott’s vainly clutching fingers and tossing it across the room. Scott whimpers, refusing to open his eyes. "You already slept in. Get up."

"Why?" If it was an actual emergency, Derek wouldn’t have waited for Scott to wake up on his own and he probably would’ve already also dragged Scott out of bed like he did with the blameless pillow. So, if it’s not a crisis, Scott feels entirely justified in making this as difficult as possible. "I don’t want sex, I just wanna sleep."

"I’m not—" Derek huffs, scaling down into a growl as his body impacts the wall. Unwillingly, Scott cracks one dry eye open. Derek’s standing with his arms crossed. Frowning, of course, but without the violent intent Scott’s grown to expect and more like Scott’s a math problem he’s trying to solve. Finally: "I want your help."

That’s unexpected enough to pop both Scott’s eyes open, and to get him to sit up. A non-emergency _and_ Derek’s asking for his help. Must be end of freaking days. "You need my help?" 

"I didn’t say need," Derek says quickly, frown deepening, eyebrows beetling lower. "I said want."

Scott decides he doesn’t want to split that hair, especially when his brain hasn’t booted up for the day yet. He scrubs at his face, scratches loosely at his chest. "Yeah, okay. What do you want?"

"Get dressed," Derek says, stooping to toss yesterday’s jeans at Scott. Even with wolf reflexes, Scott barely catches them before they hit his face. "I’ll tell you on the way."

"Seriously?" Scott shakes his pants out and looks at them. "No time for a shower?"

Only the determination to show Derek he’s not still afraid of him holds Scott still as Derek pushes off the wall to come closer. You would think it would get old, when Derek puts his hand under Scott’s chin and shoves his head back, so he—Derek—can get a long, deep whiff along Scott’s throat, but Scott’s got about a million goosebumps popping up on his skin and a semi in his shorts that will testify otherwise. 

"You smell fine to me," Derek says, pulling back far enough that Scott can see the brief starburst of Alpha red that blots out the hazel and then recedes. 

Nope, not old at all. 

"You suck," Scott says, without any bite at all, and then he starts getting dressed. 

There are donuts in the car—chocolate iced—which makes things slightly less horrible.

"Don’t get frosting on my seats," Derek says, as grumpily as if the donuts were Scott’s idea. Scott resists the impulse to ‘accidentally’ lose hold of his donut and let it fall chocolate side down on the carpet. "Where are we going?" he asks instead, indistinct through a mouthful of sugary-sweet goodness. 

"Got an appointment," Derek says, pulling out fast enough to flatten Scott against the seat back. "Already late."

"Oh, my God!" Scott exclaims, "I didn’t even know we were going anywhere!"

Derek harrumphs. 

They don’t talk the rest of the drive. Finally, they pull up in front of a storefront on the Old Beacon Hills side of downtown, **Apartment Friends** stenciled in white on the window over a line drawing of a house. 

"Apartment?" Scott asks, looking from the plate glass to Derek. "Seriously?"

Derek manages to look annoyed and embarrassed at the same time as he shrugs. "You said I should get one. I’m listening to your advice."

"Yeah, no, I get that," Scott says, blinking. "I’m just kind of amazed."

"Shut up," Derek says, twisting the key out of the ignition and sliding out of the RAV. 

Inside, a receptionist sets Derek up with a clipboard of paperwork. Scott prowls the narrow waiting area, still unsure what he’s doing here. Isaac’s the one who’s actually going to live with Derek; Scott would think he’d be the one Derek would want with him, the one whose opinion would matter for something, however flattered Scott feels that Derek would ask.

"You do know that I’ve only lived in the one house my entire life, right?" Scott asks, on his third circuit.

Derek looks up from the clipboard with a silent glare so classically Derek that Scott actually relaxes a little, even as his nuts shrink up tight to the protection of his body. 

"Yeah, okay," Scott mumbles, finally throwing himself into one of the chairs and pawing through the collection of magazines on the coffee table. The receptionist goes on ignoring them, though the dry spice of her amusement mingles floats with her perfume on the recirculated air. 

It’s not entirely true, he realizes, flipping blindly and idly through an—he turns the pages down to peek at the cover—HGTV magazine. He’d forgotten about it, but there were those few months he’d lived with his dad, after his dad had moved out and when it seemed like they were going to sell the house. But Scott sure didn’t count that period of time for anything—nothing real—and there was no reason Derek should, either. Certainly Scott’s dad had never consulted with him when he rented the ugly concrete box and left.

"Hi, I’m Connie….oh, Scott!"

Scott fumbles the magazine and it flaps to the carpet in a noisy rustle of pages. He bends for it and looks up at the tall dark-haired woman standing in the center of the reception space. 

"Uh, hi, Ms. Ruiz," Scott’s hands have stopped working, his supposed superhuman reflexes have deserted him as he fails and fails and fails to get a good grip on the magazine, crinkling and smearing pages until finally he just chucks the thing at the coffee table. Where it hits the slick of other magazines and sails right off the other side. 

"It’s actually Brooks, now. I got married last year." Connie Ruiz—now Brooks—says, the temperature of her warm smile steady as she stoops to pick up the magazine. She drops it to the table where, of course, it stays put. She wrinkles her nose a little, shifting her stance. "But you…you’re not old enough to need an apartment of your own yet, are you?"

"What? No," Scott stammers. Ms. Ruiz—Brooks—had been one of their neighbors and a friend of his mom’s, though they’d lost touch sometime after Ms. Brooks moved. She’d even babysat him a few times, a recollection that makes his face flush hot and his tongue twist up in an even tighter knot.

"Actually, the apartment’s for me," Derek finally chimes in, standing up. Scott glances at him and Derek looks…weird. 

He’s smiling. And not in an I-want-to-eat-you-for-breakfast way. It actually looks…friendly. Normal. Derek spends so much time looking like he either wants to maim someone—usually Scott—or like he’s at the end of a three-state spree of robberies that it’s actually disorienting to see Derek looking so…ordinary. 

"Oh." She takes Derek’s extended hand, but the smile is jarred a little. Scott sees her looking from Derek to him and trying to draw the lines, make a picture that fits. "I’m Connie Brooks, nice to meet you. You are…?" She puts a lilt on the question, trying to make it light, friendly, but it doesn’t quite get there.

Derek blinks and Scott knows he hears it, too. Scott can hear Ms. Brooks on the phone with his mom ( _Hi, Mel? It’s Connie… Mira, I hate to ask this, but…is Scott gay?_ ).

"Derek’s, like…" Scott flips through the possibilities like he’d gone through the magazine pages, wishes he was better at thinking fast. "My brother." 

Ms. Brooks and Derek both look at him and he explains hastily, "Not like my brother-brother. My Big Brother. Like the program, the mentoring program. He’s…" Derek’s eyebrows are up and Ms. Brooks’ mouth is open, they’re both just staring at him  
and Scott swallows and just _blurts_ : "My parents split up."

They’re the magic words: Ms. Brooks’ face softens and Scott _hates_ that look, freaking hates it, but it’s better than having her call up his mom and tell her that her little boy is getting molested by big, bad Derek Hale.

"Oh, Scott, honey," she says, and cups his cheek. "I didn’t know."

No, of course not. She’d moved before the split and Scott knew that. He feels a little queasy at his willingness to pimp his parents’ break-up out as a cover story while another part, hot, swollen and resentful, thinks this could be the only good or useful thing to come out of that whole mess. 

"Anyway," he says, drawing away, trying not to seem a jerk about it, while Ms. Brooks looks at him with those wet, sorry eyes, "it’s like…a learning thing. Life skills. For when I’m older."

"Oh," she says a third time, but this time knowingly, and with the warmth back. When she glances at Derek again, that warmth jets up even higher, as admiring as if Scott’s a cute baby or a puppy that Derek’s toting around. 

It’s not aggressive—she is married, still a newlywed, her happiness a low-level and constant cloud underneath her other scents—and more importantly, it’s what Scott wanted, to distract her from thinking about him and Derek as anything. His plan worked, so he doesn’t know why he doesn’t feel more pleased about it, that same sharp, hot pilot light burning blue and steady right in the center of his breastbone. 

"Well, in that case, let’s finish getting your paperwork filled out and talk about what you’re looking for, Derek, and then I’ll take you boys to see some apartments." She gestures toward the back of the office space. "Come on back."

☽ ☾ 

"So, that two bedroom on Chestnut," Scott suggests, shoving the page of rental details across the table to Derek. "That was nice."

Derek shakes his head. "Nothing on the ground floor. Besides, it stank of termites."

"Is that what that was?" Scott lays off licking at his ice cream cone long enough to look at Derek, surprise and a kind of nerdy pleasure chasing themselves across his face. "I thought it was just the new paint. No wonder it was so cheap."

Derek shrugs. Getting an apartment had seemed like a good plan when Scott first suggested it. A place where they’re not just squatting, a place that Isaac, at least, can call home, a place from which to build something. 

And, selfishly, decadently, though his body can handle the aches and pains of sleeping cramped up in the train car, the idea of a bed, a real bed, is an attractive one. 

_(a bed to fuck Scott in, to be fucked)_

But the realities of it, finding a place—the right place—the gauntlet of permissions needed and the information he has to give away, the question of how to pay for it all, unemployed and rootless…it’s all so much more complicated than he’d envisioned, in his stupid and naïve daydreams of a safe place and a big, warm bed. 

"What about this one?" Scott hands over another printout, this one for the walk-up on Fennec. "It was a little scruffy looking, but hey, so are you!" 

He grins, his mouth milky with ice cream and flushed red from cold. It’s the kind of sweet little-boy grin that Scott is so good at, and Derek has to bite the inside of his lip to keep from smiling back at the little shit.

Derek looks at the info sheet. "It’s over a bar." 

"So?"

Derek sighs. "You have super hearing…think it through."

"Oh." Scott’s nose scrunches. "Yeah, okay, that one’s out." His tongue swirls with thoughtless obscenity around the outside edge of his melting treat as he frowns at the handful of other printouts fanned on the table in front of him. 

"Is your mom home?" he asks, balling up the sheet for the Chestnut Street apartment and chucking it at the trash, five feet away. The crumple sinks into the center of the dark void, no net, because that, at least, he can do. 

"What?" Scott looks up from another of the rental sheets, absentmindedly tonguing pearly ice cream spills from the corner of his mouth and Derek’s gut tightens up another notch. "I don’t know. Maybe. Probably. Why?"

Derek, already hunched over the table with his hands underneath, reaches over and touches Scott’s bony-sharp knee, caressing where the denim is thinning and about to shred. Scott jerks and flinches in a new freshet of minty surprise, his eyes going wide. "Oh."

"Yeah," Derek agrees mildly, extending a nail until he can cut through the soft spot in Scott’s jeans and work his finger into the hole. _"Oh."_

"Um." Derek likes the way that even that little skin-on-skin contact, in a decidedly not-erogenous zone, can make Scott go almost cross-eyed with broken concentration, red creeping into his cheeks like sunburn. "I just…" Scott squirms a little in his chair. "I thought we were going to pick an apartment for you. You told Ms. Brooks you’d call back today."

"Plenty of today left," Derek says. The skin of Scott’s knee is rough and warm, slightly bristly with hair.

Scott’s breath catches, only slightly louder than the quickening wicker of his heart pulse. He opens his mouth to speak but all that comes out is a dry rattle. Scott coughs, face getting redder, then tries again. "She is probably home though. Uh, my mom, I mean." 

Isaac is off with some guy he knows from lacrosse, but Derek doesn’t want to take Scott back to the depot or back up to the house, someplace where they might be interrupted, walked in on. 

"What do you think about a motel?"

"Seriously?" Scott’s eyes get big and the cone droops in his hand as if he’s going to drop it.

Derek shrugs. "Yeah."

Scott frowns a little. "What, like…like The Love-In?"

"No." The unfortunately named Love’s Inn—usually bastardized to The Love-In—is one of Beacon Hill’s two hot sheet motels. It’s also where he’d meet Kate. And…no. Just no.

Even if he was willing to summon up those ghosts, he doesn’t want to take Scott there, doesn’t want to draw a line, however ephemeral, between them. "No, somewhere else."

"I…yeah, okay," Scott says finally, his voice warring between sounding completely lost and eagerness. His ice cream is a lost cause, melted in streaks over his hand. Scott chucks the drippy cone at the garbage, clanging off the rim and licks the drying sweetness from his fingers.

☽ ☾ 

Though Derek had vetoed The Love-In, Scott thought they’d end up someplace like it; The King’s Roost, maybe, or even the creepy, old Fontainebleau, where all the guys on parole end up, but instead, they go to a Hampton Inn and get a really nice room with a kitchenette and full size fridge and big flat-screen and a king bed that Scott wants to burrow into, despite the strong smell of bleach on the sheets.

"This is awesome!" Scott throws himself onto the mattress, rolling from one side to the other before jumping off and going to the windows. "Even the view is nice!"

"It’s Beacon Hills," Derek points out, though Scott has a sneaking suspicion Derek’s laughing at him under the bitchface. 

"Yeah, but it looks really pretty from up here." On the glass, Scott traces the cloud-like outlines of the trees, so brightly, vividly green against the hard turquoise of the sky, the earth tones of the buildings, the confetti splatter of people and cars and flowers. "How can you…?"

He turns around and Derek’s sprawled out bare on the bed, legs spread, working his cock lazily with one hand. The searing heat that scalds to the surface of his skin _is_ at least partially for the sight of Derek, naked, hard, waiting for him, but it’s _mostly_ because he forgot.

Forgot this is why they’re here. 

"Oh, right," Scott says lamely, running his suddenly sweaty hands down his thighs. Fucking. They're going to fuck. _He's_ going to fuck Derek.

Belatedly, clumsily, he grabs at the hem of his shirt. "I guess I should…" He bucks it over his head. 

He’d been aware of the blissful cool of the air conditioning from the moment they walked into the room, but without his shirt, Scott is more conscious of it, like a cold hand outspread between his shoulder blades, scratching down his back. 

He’s also conscious of Derek watching him as he undresses; the soft, dry slur of Derek’s fingers moving over his dick turns wetter, silken. The scent of him starts to overpower the more industrial, hotel smells, strong, thick, known. Scott chases that taste-scent, breathing it in, rolling it over his tongue, pulling it deep into his sinuses as he undresses, a life-line in all this unfamiliarity.

When Scott straightens up, Derek’s stopped jerking himself, though he’s still got his hand wrapped around his cock. Scott kind of freezes under Derek’s regard, or at least actively stops, hands falling to his sides. 

"Do you still want to do this?"

Scott hadn’t been totally sure but, weirdly enough, once Derek asks the question aloud, his sudden shyness shatters like brittle glass and what’s behind it is sudden rushing warmth, like Derek snuck up on him in the dark and, when Scott whips around, finds a friend instead of a threat. 

"Yeah, I’m good," Scott says, giddy relief curling his lips into a grin that feels like it takes up his whole face. He climbs onto the mattress and grabs Derek’s ankles, pulling Derek’s legs together just enough that he can knee walk up a little. Derek’s blank non-expression breaks to let a flicker of willing amusement through, a hint of a smile, though he doesn’t move, letting Scott do…whatever it is Scott’s going to do. 

He puts his hands on either side of Derek’s hips and leans in, following that _male-Derek-aroused_ scent up one thigh so closely that the hairs tickle his nose. Scott’s lungs expand, his mouth opens a little, trying to pull all of it in, smell it and taste it, absorb it and tear it apart into its component pieces.

They're going to fuck. He is going to fuck Derek.

The muscle jumps and Derek’s quiet inhale is as loud to Scott’s ears as paper tearing; Scott shifts to hold Derek there, keep him from moving. 

When Scott reaches the loose cage of Derek’s hand around his stiff dick, Scott licks around fingers and dick both, the salt of skin mingling and clashing with the bitterer salt of cloudy pre-come. 

Being up on his knees feels like he’s too far away, even though he knows it’s not, really. But closer…closer would be better. Derek lets Scott put his shoulders under the backs of his thighs and shifts easily with the urging of Scott's hands, legs splayed out wide, displayed. 

It strikes Scott suddenly, pressing a bite into the inside of Derek's thigh, how much Derek lets him do whatever it is he wants, how patient he is while Scott fumbles and explores and gets lost in his unexpected, new interest in cock. 

Patient isn’t a word he would ever apply to Derek, even if he's trying to be polite (lying his ass off) but he's clearly going to have to revise that. Scott lifts his head and regards Derek's softened, relaxed face, wonders if it’s easier for Derek when it’s just bodies, no talking involved. 

Of course, the second Derek notices Scott looking at him, his expression closes up again, faintly suspicious, vaguely angry, as he demands roughly: "What?"

Scott shakes his head, mouth curling up. "Nothing." He keeps his hands moving on Derek, partly because he wants to, but also as an experiment, to see if he can get Derek back to that relaxed place, just by touch. "I like this," Scott says, which is the flat-out truth, and who could've ever seen _that_ coming? "I didn't expect it when I asked you to help me."

Derek's eyebrows scrunch, like they're trying to meet in the middle. "What'd you expect?"

Scott snorts. "More yelling and screaming. Maybe some fighting. A lot less naked in sweet hotel rooms." 

The armor over Derek's expression cracks and dissolves and he gives one of his rare grins and a low huffing laugh, curling up to reach for Scott. "C'mere."

Scott knows his mouth has to be sour but Derek kisses him anyway, hard and deep, stubble burning against Scott's lips and chin and _oh, hello there_. 

Scott kisses back and the two of them tangle on the mattress; Scott's hand scratching lines down Derek's back, Derek's leg a solid weight over Scott's hip, the slow, flexing undulation as they grind.

It's good. This is the part of him and Derek that works, and the skittishness melts from Scott's body and bones, leaving only the sweet craving of touch and being touched, warmth and friction on his dick and the taste of another person filling his senses, like a kind of drunkenness, overtaking the whole world, blotting it out.

Scott can’t entirely lose the awareness, though, that this lazy rub-off isn't their endgame, that there's more to come. And, now that the first fear is gone, anticipation is creeping up in its place; a hunger that surprises him with its bite, the strength of it, the sharpness. He's not even always sure how much he _likes_ Derek all the time, but the thought of fucking him, of feeling Derek come on his dick, knowing that he did that, made Derek feel that…

Yes. God, yes.

Scott's education in regard to the butt has been simple: don't. An edict handed down by his mother when he was still mainly in diapers and stuck to with a diligence that he mostly hasn't questioned. But, as his hand works down Derek's back _toward_ Derek's ass with nervous and roundabout intent, _don't_ doesn't seem to cut it. 

Scott's fingers caress from the deep dip of Derek's waist to the hard-muscled swell of his ass, conscious of a desire to play. Scott palms it, little experimental, squeezing circles to test the resilience, the give.

Derek breaks the kiss, his forehead and nose pressed to Scott's, breath panting and frantic, puffing from his half-opened mouth to Scott's spit-wet lips. Derek isn't looking at Scott, eyes fixed downward so the lids are nearly shut, and he doesn't move, but the promise of it is there, somehow, like he's vibrating so deeply under the skin that it's more guessed-at than felt. His want fills the space between them, a scent and a taste and something Scott just knows, all at the same time, same as he knows what a peach smells and tastes like. Derek wants this, so much he's literally stiff with it, and Scott wants to roll in that knowledge, aglow with it.

"Do it," Derek says, rough as if both words were ground from stone. Behind his lids, his eyes move; they're so close, Scott feels the heat blushing from Derek's face, his throat. The _please_ floats between them, unspoken but not unheard. 

Scott traces the crease of Derek's ass, exploring it without dipping in—yet—but Derek shudders anyway, pushing deeper into Scott's grasp, mouth and breath shaping the word _yeah_ without any sound coming out. 

Scott rolls onto his back a bit, brings Derek with him so he can get both arms around him, get both hands on him, kneading the flesh, squeezing, and then pulling Derek's cheeks apart, letting the musk of him mingle with the other scents in the room. 

They both make a noise, satisfied and startled at the same time, when Scott dips in, lets his fingers touch the tight knurl of Derek's hole, and Derek lurches against Scott, close crush of dicks and balls that goes back and forth between pleasurable and too much. 

"I need…" Scott starts, a sentence with too many possibilities and a lack of brain power to untangle them from each other. He needs to be _there_ , that carefully hidden place, needs to put his dick there, in there, inside there—inside Derek—as badly as he's ever wanted or needed anything. "You have to show me," he says instead, circling it with his fingertip, feeling it push and pulse back at him, like recognition, like welcome. Scott licks Derek's mouth and tastes blood where Derek's teeth have cut the flesh. "Show me what to do."

Now Derek's eyes open so Scott can see them, dark, clear-cut borders, soft, pale green and the heart-wood brown at the center, surrounding the darkness of the pupil. "Yeah," Derek agrees, voice still grating and weak. He lifts his head and looks toward around the room. "What…the lube. I have to…"

He must spot the plastic bag from the CVS, because Derek unsnarls himself from Scott, rising not entirely steadily on his hands and knees to stretch for it. Scott growls a little, grabbing at the scant meat of Derek's hip to keep him from moving too far, taking Derek's cock with his other hand, thick and hot, wet at the tip where it peeks redly from the foreskin. Scott spreads the liquid with his thumb and cranes up to nip at Derek's belly, arched over his head. 

Derek wavers out a noise, somewhere between a sigh and a groan, skin twitching like he doesn't know whether he wants to escape or get closer…and then he's back, in Scott's lap with the tube of KY in hand. 

Scott sits up and licks at Derek's throat, letting Derek's blood pulse against his tongue. "How hard would I have to bite you for it to last?" Scott asks, mumbling into the skin, baring his teeth to press into it. "To mark you?"

"You couldn't," Derek says, sounding either breathless or unsure.

"If I was an alpha, I could," Scott persists.

"Yeah," Derek agrees, angling up higher on his knees and arching his back. Scott growls again, deeper, clutching Derek close. "If you were m—an alpha, you could." He grunts and Scott tilts his head so he can see what Derek's doing. 

Derek's got one arm twisted behind himself. Scott's 'research' was graphic enough that he can picture what's happening; he definitely doesn't have to move his hand to discover—feel—for himself, but he does, following the hard, corded tendons of Derek's forearm and wrist, the bony armature of the fingers, into that hot space between, touching where Derek's pushed—is moving—two fingers in and the taut strain of his hole around them. 

Derek groans, hips jerking and his cock sliding against Scott's chest, when Scott explores the join, fingers the tight rim. 

"No," Scott says, looking up at Derek's red, tense face. He grabs Derek's wrist but doesn't tug. 

Derek tries to give his usual smirk, but he can't hold it, his feelings like a kaleidoscope across the surface of his face. "It's not going to fit up there without a little help," Derek says, holding Scott's shoulder for balance as he rides his hand. 

"No…I know," Scott says, closing harder on Derek's wrist to show he means it. "But I want… You're going to show me. Show me everything. I want to."

Derek stops, gets still and blank-faced in that way that means Scott's surprised him. Like _please_ , the unsaid _Really?_ fills the silence, Derek's erratic exhales making ghost kisses on Scott's skin.

"You…" Derek doesn't seem to know how to finish that sentence. His arm twists in a way that Scott lets him go and he pulls his fingers free. Immediately, Scott's there, feeling the slight gape, already closing, and the slickness of the lube. Derek's breath skips and his hand tightens on Scott's shoulder 'til the bone creaks. 

Scott wets his lips and his heart rabbits in his chest but he doesn't look away and he doesn't stutter when he says, "I want to do it all. I want to touch you, stretch you." He pushes his finger into Derek—just a little, not wanting to hurt—and shivers, a little dizzy, a little drunk. "Just show me what to do, so I don't hurt you."

☽ ☾ 

For as long as Derek's known what prep was, he's done his own. Even with the guys that would've done it for him…there's just something about having fingers in you that's intimate in a way that the blunt drive of a cock isn't. Besides, he knows what he can take. Easier to jam his own fingers up there, make some space and then get on with what he's there to do.

He doesn't even know why he's letting Scott do this. The feel of Scott is different than his own hand. It's weird, uncomfortable, the fullness, the pressure, the angle. Derek's cock likes it well enough; Scott can go deeper and he's clearly in no rush, touching every place in Derek that's crying out for it, that wants to be filled and Derek has nothing to do but let it happen, feel it happen. 

"You don't have to," Derek starts and then Scott finds his prostate, rolling the pad of his finger back and forth over it like it's a magic button and Derek can't think or breathe, just clinging, like one more wave and he'll wash away in the riptide. 

When he can unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth, he tries again, "You can just…" The rest of that sentence escapes him and Derek sighs, a sound that comes out as much a moan. "You're not going to hurt me," he says finally, wriggling meaningfully and willing Scott to fucking _take the hint_ for once. 

But no. 

Scott leans back so he can see Derek's face—which is another thing about this Derek doesn't like very much, because he knows he doesn't look nearly as disinterested as he'd like to, he can feel his own need bleeding up through his skin and out, where Scott can't help but sense it, smell it, taste it, every time his tongue laps over Derek's feverish skin.

Scott looks stricken. His thumb feathers around Derek's rim, too soft—ticklish—and too gentle; Derek clenches his teeth and jaw, throat working around the heated lump that makes it so hard to breathe. "Is it… Is this not okay? Do you want me to stop?"

"No," Derek says. Why did he say no? 

Scott's expression eases, he stops looking so tragically young and the movement of his fingers inside Derek feels everything except uncertain, liquid pleasure that cascades, seemingly, from Derek's eyeballs to his toes before pooling in his balls, the aching length of his cock. 

"Can we…?" Scott asks, "On your back?" He thumbs Derek again, but this time in time with the rocking thrust of his fingers. "I want to see."

Derek doesn't say anything, but he moves when Scott moves, gets on his back and opens his legs to let Scott between them, shuddering when Scott rubs his empty, opened hole, biting back sounds when Scott's fingers slip into him again, screwing deep. 

How long has it been? Derek gropes for the memory but can't find it, can't pull it up from the mess of redacted files and outright deletions. He can only fish up the feeling, the rightness of being mounted and fucked, hot breath or teeth on his neck; being filled so completely there's nowhere left to run or hide. 

Scott has a really nice cock, big and thicker than you'd think to look at him. Derek can't bring himself to think about how long he's been thinking about Scott—and Scott's cock—in exactly this way but with the dick in question only minutes and inches from being inside him, Derek can let himself wallow in the throb of want and the heavy weight of anticipation, pinning him to the bed. 

"Scott," he croaks, shaking, cramping with it, as Scott takes him apart with fingers alone, "It's enough. It's enough, c'mon…"

Scott's short laugh is a puff of heat against Derek's taint, followed by the tender brush of his lips against the inside of his thigh. His fingers linger a moment without moving and then withdraw and Derek bites back a groan at the emptiness, fights not to roll his hips questing, begging. "Sorry," Scott says. "Allison…" He stops, except for the brush of his thumbs on the inner curves of Derek's ass. "It was always so fast—rushed. She never…"

"I'm not Allison," Derek says flatly. He lifts his head enough to see it when Scott smiles and kisses Derek's thigh again.

"I know," Scott says, kneeling up, running the flat of his hand the length of Derek's dick, amazing, a tease. "I don't actually forget that," he says, watching Derek's face as he does it again, and then again. "I always know…this is you."

Derek makes a strangled noise and lets his head fall back to the mattress, even as he writhes up to each caress. 

"Hey," Scott says, "we didn't get any condoms. Do we…"

"Don't need 'em."

"Good." The satisfaction in Scott's voice, the way it deepens over the word is like a dirty fondle all its own, Derek's legs spreading wider as the thick, heavy head of Scott's cock slips along his cleft, catching on his open rim and then settling just that little, teasing bit in. Derek's breath catches. 

Scott flexes, pushes in, bigger and less flexible than fingers but _so much better,_ breaching Derek, forcing him open, and Derek knows he can take it, his body can take anything that anyone does to it, but for a second, it doesn't _feel_ true, panicky uncertainty and the inevitability of Scott, thrusting in.

There's only one thing Derek can do.

Derek lets go, letting Scott in, letting Scott have him, surrendering, head arching back to bare his throat. 

For all he despairs of Scott in other ways, that's apparently an invite the other werewolf can't turn down. Scott surges over Derek's body, sinking deep as his mouth searches out Derek's neck, sucking hard and then biting—blunt human teeth but sharp enough for the bloom of pain Derek wants/needs, echoing the burn in his thighs, in his ass, the kindling fire in his belly and balls. 

"Got you," Scott snarls against Derek's skin, somehow promise and threat both. His hands are tight on Derek's wrists and he curls like a wave, the last inches of him sliding in until they're nestled together and Scott grinds like he wants to get deeper still. 

_Yes._

"Got you," Scott says again, fiercer, rougher, sucking bruises into Derek's skin that hurt nearly as much to heal as they do going in. "I got you, I fucking got you…"

When Scott was working him open, it felt like he was using the entire tube of KY, but when he starts to move, short driving thrusts, like Scott can't stand to be separated from Derek for the half-second of withdrawal, Derek swears he feels every ridge, swell and vein rubbing within, deep friction that spreads like a slow, sweet poison through his every cell. Replicating, multiplying, taking over until it's all he can think about or feel, toes curling, hands spasming in empty air for something to cling to. 

But. 

Scott's right here and as Derek thinks it, Scott lets go of Derek's wrists to push his fingers through the spaces between Derek's, linking them tight, his weight pressing his hips and belly into Derek's on each—now smoother, now slower—thrust. 

"…taste you…" He noses at Derek's jaw, the back of Derek's ear, whispering soft sibilants and slurry-drunk consonants between soft kisses, wet, sloppy licks and enough nipping scratches of his teeth to keep Derek there, present and feeling. "…smell how much you want this, like this, feel like I could die, you feel so good and I want to make you feel that too, want to make you feel good, so good, Derek, God, you're so beautiful when you're being fucked, I didn't know, didn't know it'd be like this, didn't know I could want this so much…and I do. I do want this, God, it's…it's so different, but it's good, _fuck_ , so good and I want, I want…"

"Yes," Derek says, first without sound, unable to wring noise from his throat, his mouth after swallowing it all back for so long, "Yes." Because if Scott wants it, then Derek wants to give it to him, would give him anything for Scott to keep touching him like this, fucking him like this, holding him like this. Scott, who works so hard to protect what's his.

_…I could be yours…_

Scott's mouth covers his, clumsy and erratic, each plunge into Derek pulling them half apart. Derek lets Scott kiss and lick each moan from him, each grunting plea for more, each ecstatic _yes_ when Scott gives it to him and more besides. 

"I want you to come," Scott says, his eyes drugged and hot as he disentangles their fingers and guides Derek to hold his own cock. "I can't… Help me. Help me make you come."

Derek feels like he's been on the verge of it since Scott put his dick in, floating on this ocean of his own need; at the touch of their joined hands, it pulls in and focuses, sharpens to urgency, hot heavy balls and his cock like stone in his palm. Derek screws into his hand, moving to Scott's rhythm, Scott's encouragement, and lets his orgasm rise up through him. It feels big—huge—big enough to break him, to shatter him into a thousand bleeding pieces, but it doesn't frighten Derek, not like it should, like it usually does.

"C'mon," Scott urges, "I'm right here. I've got you."

Scott does. He does.

☽ ☾ 

Scott expects Derek to protest being curled up as the little spoon—at being involved in cuddling, period—but he doesn't, and Scott feels like he needs it enough to take Derek's silence and the sleepy contentment radiating from his skin as permission. Scott fits tightly against Derek's broad back, his hand spread wide over Derek's chest so that he can feel as well as hear the dull, steady hammer of Derek's heart.

Scott misses this the most. Not that he and Allison ever had a lot of time, especially to just lie like this, lazy and naked, and Allison would get self-conscious about him looking at her, after a little while… But just being able to touch someone—and be touched in return—to hold them…sometimes it feels like he's starving, a gnaw in his chest and gut that he can't do anything about. 

This, with Derek, now, it's like the opposite of that. 

Scott smiles against Derek's spine and quietly, not sounding sleepy at all, Derek asks, "What?"

Scott laughs shortly. "I was just thinking about when we met. You said we were brothers, and I was thinking how glad I am _that's_ not really true."

Derek shakes and though he doesn't make a sound, Scott can tell he's laughing, too. 

"Thank you," Scott says, when Derek's still again. "I mean…I know you didn't do this _for_ me, but….thanks. I think…" Scott pauses, arms tightening around Derek. "I wanted this, but I think maybe I needed it, too."

They're too close for Scott to think that Derek's asleep, but Derek's quiet so long, that Scott thinks this is how it'll go, that Derek'll play possum rather than acknowledge what Scott said—which is fine, it's more important to Scott that he did say it—but then, just when Scott's stopped really listening for a response: "Yeah." And, even quieter, "Me too."

Something about the admission, from Derek and aloud, without having to fight him for it… Scott's hips undulate, pushing his soft and still sensitive dick deeper into the warm crack of Derek's ass. Derek pushes back, which is another huge shocker, and for a while, they just move like that, slow and without intention, but still good. Sweet. 

"I think I'm going to rent the loft," Derek says out of nowhere. "The one on Market." He turns his head, though of course, he can't crane far enough to actually see Scott without turning into the girl from the Exorcist. "You liked that one, right?"

"I…yeah," Scott says. He hadn't thought Derek was paying that much attention to what Scott did or didn't like. 

"Think Isaac will?"

The sleek industrial loft is about as different from the Lahey's stuck-in-the-70's tract house as Scott can imagine. "Yeah," Scott says, pressing his lips between Derek's shoulder blades, inhaling the mingle of his scent and Derek's, and trying to blot out the memory of the basement freezer, the scratch marks on the lid and lining. "I think he'll love it."

Derek nods. "Good." He folds his arm over Scott's to hold it tighter to his belly. "Good."

☽ ☾ 

"So…" His mom says, in that expectant tone that puts Scott's hackles up, even before he had, you know, actual hackles to put up, "you and Derek. You guys spent the whole day together…"

Scott inhales the piece of carrot he just bit off and tries to gag it up quietly and unobtrusively, before he chokes to death. Though, depending on where and how this conversation goes, death might be preferable.

"…did he say anything about Alex?"

Scott manages to expel the hunk of carrot from his throat and immediately starts coughing. His mom puts down the knife she was using to cut up the onions and bell peppers and carrots and whacks him completely unhelpfully on his back. 

"I'm fine," Scott croaks out between coughs, moving away. The flat of her hand is like being hit with a wooden spoon, and he speaks from experience on that. "I'm fine," he says again, stronger, as the irritation in the back of his throat cools and fades. He goes to the fridge and grabs a bottle of water anyway. 

"So is that a _yes_ , Derek said something about Alex cough, or a _no_ , he was his usual uncommunicative self, cough?" His mom asks, leaning on the counter with one hand and putting the other on her hip. 

"It was an 'I will pay you really huge sums of money if we could just never discuss Derek's love life ever again' cough," Scott says, licking the last drops of water off his lips and chucking the empty bottle at the recycling bin. 

"Pffft!" His mom rolls her eyes and crosses her arms. "Where would you get huge sums of money?" Her indifference lasts exactly zero point no seconds, though until she sags back against the counter again. "C'mon, honey, I've been _dying_ to ask you all day. Did he like her? If I invited her again, do you think he'd ask her out?"

Scott covers his face with both hands. "Mom. _Stop._ Seriously." He lets his arms drop. "I told you when you told me about Alex that it was a bad idea."

"Oh." His mom frowns. "So he _did_ say something about Alex." She shakes her head and turns back to the vegetables, picking up the big butcher's knife she uses. She cuts one rib off a pepper before she sets the knife down again and looks at Scott. "He really didn't like Alex? How could he not like Alex? She's wonderful! And cute as a button. And man, her tits, I _wish_ I had tits like that…well, I did, before you came along and sucked all the life out of…"

_"Mom!"_ Scott's eyes squinch shut and he waves his hands in a frantic X. "Not okay! Not. Okay!"

"Oh, honey." His mom smiles at him, taking up the knife yet again. "You're such a little prude. It's adorable."

Scott wonders if she'd say that if she had any inkling about the kind of stuff he's been up to lately. Hell, the stuff he'd been doing just a couple hours ago. With Derek.

"Derek didn't say anything about Alex," Scott begins. "We were busy looking at apartments…"

"So he might actually like her," his mom leaps in, her smile and face brightening. "I think they'd be so cute together, don't you think? I mean, she doesn't know about the…" His mother hooks her fingers into claws and makes a completely embarrassing _grrr_ sound, "but she's very open-minded, she's always reading those Urban Fantasy books—not the Twilight ones, but more like the Buffy knockoff ones—and if they did ever get to that point, I really think she'd be okay with it… I should invite her to the next dinner!"

Scott sighs. "Mom. Please don't. Seriously. Derek doesn't want… I don't think he's…" Scott struggles for what to say, what he _can_ say, especially without giving away his part in this. 

"Don't think he's what?" She waves a hand at the refrigerator. "Can you get the chicken out, start it brining?"

"Yeah." Scott gets one of the mixing bowls down and the round container of Morton's salt. "I don't think he's interested," Scott says finally, splashing salt into the bottom of the bowl.

"But you don't know that. You said yourself that Derek didn't say anything about Alex one way or the other."

"Mom, you're not listening to me," Scott says, an edge climbing into his voice. 

"Well, is he seeing someone already? Because if that's the case, you could've just said that."

"Not…'seeing', exactly." Scott's chest is tight as he runs water into the bowl, head down so he doesn't have to look at his mom. He thinks about them, curled up together in the hotel bed. It barely seems real to him, but at the same time, he can remember everything about how Derek felt, warm and easy, and how it smelled, him and Derek and sex and the sweetness of mutual satisfaction, mutual contentment. "I mean…not like a relationship or anything…"

_Is it?_

"If it's not a relationship, then he's free to see other people," his mom points out, in a way that would seem sensible if they were talking about anyone else. "What's she like?"

"It's not a she." Scott turns his head to see his mom's reaction to that.

Down goes the knife. His mom looks over at him. "I thought you said he isn't gay."

Scott rolls his eyes. "I said he's not fu—having sex with Isaac," he corrects. "That's not the same thing."

"Nice save," she says with a look, showing that his almost-profanity didn't go unnoticed. His mom's lips purse. "Hmmm. Well, that does put a kink in things."

Scott puts the bowl on the counter and swings around to face her, the knot in his chest rolling heavily down into his gut where it sits like a rock. "Mom," he tries again. "Please don't… Please just don't. The dinners…they're awesome. Really awesome. But you _suck_ at matchmaking."

His mom gapes at him, wounded. "I do not! What about Mandy and Butch," she asks, naming two nurses at the hospital.

"Hooked up _once_ and then Butch started going out with that stripper," Scott says, crossing his arms and leaning his butt against the sink.

"Ugh, I forgot about that." His mom wrinkles her nose. "How do you even know about that?"

"I sit around and wait for you and people forget that I'm there." Scott shrugs. 

"Okay, but what about Jana Ortiz and that guy, what was his name…? The mail guy…"

"Nigel," Scott supplies. "And on their first date, he took Jana to his church and tried to have her baptized. I don't know exactly what Jana did or said, but he got his route changed right after that. That's why he's not our mailman anymore."

"Really? Huh." His mom tilts her head, considering. "I wonder how I missed that."

"The point is," Scott says, nobly not following up on that, "things with Derek are pretty good right now. I don't want to mess that up. So could you just…could you just _not_?"

His mom sighs. "Fine," she says grudgingly. "God forbid I offend your secret boyfriend."

Scott shakes his head. "I know you think that's really funny, but it's not. It's totally not."

☽ ☾ 

Scott tries lying on his back, but something about it feels _wrong_ , and after shifting restlessly and uncomfortably on the sheets for what feels like forever—even though the clock tells him it's been less than five minutes—he finally rolls onto his side and fits around Derek's tucked curl.

Derek doesn't say anything, but he makes room for Scott's arm to sling over his waist and lifts his ankle so Scott can shove his leg into the space between. 

And that. That feels better. 

Of course, Scott's bed isn't huge and there's nothing inherently weird about wanting to touch another person, especially another person that you just had sex with. In fact, if you don't want to touch someone you just had sex with, you should probably do some serious thinking about what you're doing with your dick, because that's gross and skeevy. And pretty damn mean, while you're at it. 

Scott is not a mean guy. 

And he is a little lonely, truth be told. Stiles is, of course, his best friend and an awesome best friend at that, and if Scott called him—and Stiles' dad didn't need him for something—Stiles would be there in a heartbeat…but Scott has discovered that there's a second, different kind of loneliness that Stiles doesn't know anything about and couldn't fix if he did. 

Derek, though… Derek gets it.

"Is this okay?" Scott asks, raising his head to look at Derek's profile.

Derek makes a sleepy hum of agreement and scoots back a little, snugging his ass closer to Scott's spent cock.

Scott had invited Derek over because… Well, the sex and the possible lying around together after the sex ( _cuddling, just call it cuddling, dork_ ) had been an integral part of the plan, but Scott's main goal had been to test himself, test his feelings for Derek. Make sure he's not falling into the exact hole that Stiles said Scott would.

Make sure that Derek, isn't, either. 

But now the sex is over, and…

And what? 

It doesn't feel any different than any of the other times he's had sex with Derek. Which is starting to be a frighteningly big number of times, while Scott is busy giving himself stuff to freak out about. 

Scott lets his breath out and rests his head against the knob at the top of Derek's spine, rubbing at the smooth-taut skin with his forehead, his nose, his cheek. 

"Laura used to do that," Derek sighs, soft and thick. Immediately after saying it, Derek tenses, the scent of him suddenly thicker, stronger.

"Not like this, I hope." Scott tries to make it quiet, joking, keeps scritching his fingers gently over Derek's belly, though his skin erupts in goosebumps, because he _really hopes_ it wasn't like this. 

Derek snorts and Scott breathes again. "Not everything is about sex, jackass." Derek shifts and rolls onto his back, though he holds Scott's hand where it is on his stomach, fingertips playing over Scott's knuckles. "We touch a lot. We need to."

_You don't_ Scott thinks, but even as he thinks it, he knows it's not true, not anymore, and even when it was true, Scott would have to be an idiot not to get the reasons why. 

"Is that why I want to touch you all the time?"

Derek smirks, guiding Scott's fingers down. "I don't know, Scott. Is that why?"

Scott leans down and nips Derek's shoulder, grinning. "Jerk." Scott drags his teeth over the skin, wishing vaguely again that it was possible for him leave a mark, something that would last longer than two seconds. He lifts his head. "Seriously, though. What are we doing?"

Derek's eyebrows twitch briefly before his face goes blank and still, except for his eyes, which are always a wolf's eyes, even when his face is at its most human. Scott tugs at the inside of his cheek with teeth, biting it, and wishing he could call the words back. He hadn't meant to ask and he hadn't meant to ask nearly that bluntly except it was still bugging him, the conversation with Stiles, the conversation with his mom.

"Do we have to be doing anything?" Derek asks slowly, a frown tugging out slowly from the blankness. 

"I don't know." Scott shrugs one shoulder. "I just thought… I know I asked you not to…with anyone else, with Alex. I didn't want…" Another shrug, less sure than the first.

Derek keeps looking at Scott, steady and without giving Scott any idea what's going on in his head. Then, finally: "The reason that Laura used to rub herself on me was because she didn't like the smell of other people on my skin. Even before she was my Alpha, I was _her wolf_."

Scott blinks, trying to make all the pieces of what Derek's saying fit into place in his brain. "Okay, but…I'm not your Alpha _and_ you're not… I mean… You don't belong to me."

Derek's teeth flash. "Oh, there's finally something in Beacon Hills you don't claim as belonging to you?"

"You know what I mean." Scott shoves Derek, trying not to smile.

"You're still thinking of it in terms of romance, sex," Derek says, rolling his eyes, "instead of something that's just in your nature. Werewolves are territorial. We like to piss on things, mark them as ours." He glances down to where Scott's fingers are making circles on the exact spot Scott wanted to bite, when he was wishing he could mark Derek. 

Heat spreads through Scott's face like an instant sunburn and he starts to snatch his hand away, but Derek's faster, pinning Scott's fingers flat to his chest. "It's fine as long as you don't start thinking you can _actually_ pee on me," Derek says, smirk firmly back in place. "I like a lot of things, but I'm not into watersports."

"Oh, God, you are disgusting," Scott says, rolling his eyes and still blushing at the same time. Still, when Derek tugs, Scott lets himself be pulled into a kiss, mouth and cock more than willing to go a second round while they have the time.

☽ ☾ 

"This is ours?" Isaac cranes to look up the iron spiral staircase in the corner before straightening to glance at Derek again, a slow and hesitant smile creeping across his face, mint and spice from his skin perfuming the otherwise stale air.

Derek shrugs, tucking his hand in his pockets. "Yep."

"Like, really? Ours? To live in?" Isaac rubs his hand down the nearest pillar, looks at his fingers, makes a face, and rubs whatever it is on the back of his jeans.

"Yeah."

The realtor, Brooks, had called yesterday saying the landlord had approved the application—with Derek paying twice the security deposit, given his current jobless state—and that he could come sign the lease and get the keys that day, if he wanted. 

He'd wanted. 

Isaac laughs and crosses the space between them faster than Derek was expecting, to throw his arms around Derek and lift him up in a bear hug. 

Derek arches his eyebrows and Isaac sets him down hastily, but the grin keeps breaking through his contrite expression. "This is _awesome_!"

When they'd been making the rounds with Connie Brooks, Derek had mostly been thinking about the defensibility of the apartments, their proximity to potentially nosy or obnoxious neighbors. Despite Scott's advice, he hadn't really been thinking about them _living_ here, about this being their home and on his second view of the loft, he thinks it shows: the exposed pipes, the dull concrete of the walls and floor and pillars, the muddy glass of the skylight. The big gaping hole in the wall to the elevator, like a wrecking ball came through the place. 

When Derek thinks of home, it doesn't look anything like this. 

Isaac doesn't seem disappointed in Derek's choice, though. Just the opposite, whooping and jumping up to smack the shade of one of the overhead lights. 

"Don't break anything before we've even moved in." It comes out barking, sharp, and Derek wipes his hand over his mouth, choking back his words. He wants Isaac to like this place. Why does it bug him so much that Isaac does? 

"Sorry." Isaac bites his lip, but the faint peppery-ness of embarrassment is almost completely drowned beneath the rolling waves of his excitement. "Just… I'm excited. 

Derek reaches for Isaac, ignoring Isaac's tiny reflexive flinch, to pull Isaac in against his side. "It's pretty exciting, right?"

Isaac recovers quickly, settling against Derek with an inaudible but obvious sigh, rubbing his cheek briefly over Derek's shoulder. "Yeah," Isaac agrees, a growling, heartfelt note in his voice that makes Derek curse himself for not seeing it sooner, how much Isaac's needed this. 

Derek tugs Isaac's head down, scruffs his face in Isaac's hair, inhaling Isaac's scent, absorbing it into his own. "It's going to be pretty tight for a while," Derek says, the space around his lungs opening up, his tight shoulders dropping from up around his ears as he breathes in: _pack_. "Between the car and the rent…and we're going to have to get furniture, I guess…"

"I can help," Isaac says, lifting his head. "I've got the money from my dad's life insurance—it's not a lot, but—and I've been helping out at Deaton's some…I can get another job, if I need to…"

Derek shakes his head. "You don't have to do that."

"I want to," Isaac insists, straightening, pulling out of Derek's grip without moving any further away. "If this…if it's for us, then it's mine, too." He looks around at the apartment and Derek can almost hear Isaac's determination clicking into place like a lock's tumblers. "I want to help. For the pack." He glances back to Derek again, the combination of wary uneasiness and stubbornness leaching his blue eyes to a nearly steely gray. Still, it's more a plea than anything when Isaac says, softer, "Let me help."

"Not the money from your father," Derek says, raising one finger warningly. "That's yours. For college or…whatever." It occurs to him he doesn't even know if Isaac wants to go to college, or what he'd study if he did. 

Isaac's smile blazes back to full brilliance and he hugs Derek again, quicker than the first one, before he's wandering off toward the doorway that leads into the tiny kitchenette and the bathroom. 

Derek leans against the nearest pillar and lets Isaac explore. He doesn't like the idea of taking money from Isaac—and not only because doesn't really have any—but it is the right thing to do, the way the pack operates: everyone contributes. 

Laura hadn't liked taking money from him, either, but she had, from his series of odd jobs, or the times that the guys he fucked gave it to him, mistaking his willingness for a transaction. Derek never bothered to correct them and he never talked to Laura about where the money came from, though of course she'd always smell them on him. That, at least, is something Isaac is never going to have to worry about. 

"Can we sleep here tonight?" Even in another room, the naked eagerness in Isaac's voice makes Derek cringe, but it wakes a twin spark in his chest; this place is _theirs_ , paid-for and safe and, except for Scott, no one knows about it. 

"Yeah," Derek agrees, casting around the cavernous room again with an eye to what they'll need. It won't take any time at all to pack up their meager possessions and they could probably even strap a cheap mattress set to the top of the RAV, if they don't dawdle and get there before the stores close.

"There's not a lot of privacy, though," Isaac says, when he emerges from his investigation of the kitchenette. 

Derek shrugs. "No less than at the depot. I'm not planning on dancing with my dick out, if that's what you're worried about."

Isaac chokes on a laugh, half hiding it behind his hand. "No. I was just thinking about you and Scott. Are we going to have some kind of…like a sock on the doorknob or something?"

"This is your h—place, too," Derek says. He doesn't know why he's avoiding using the 'H' word. He's been thinking it enough. But saying it out loud feels different, like asking for trouble. "I'm not going to just kick you out."

"Yeah, but I don't want to be here for that,' Isaac says, wrinkling his nose.

"Scott's not my boyfriend." Derek can tell it comes out harder than he means it to by the way Isaac's pupils dilate and he hunches subtly smaller and sideways. 

Derek puffs out, dragging his fingers down his face. "This is just a short term thing. You don't need to worry about it. Let me handle my sex life."

Isaac shrugs. "Sure. It's just you and Scott have been…" Isaac rolls his hands vaguely, "together a lot lately and I just… Look, I don't care if you and Scott want to… I mean, I like Scott. He's a good guy. So if you and he want to…" Again that completely unhelpful swirl of fingers, "it's cool with me. Not that you need my permission!" Isaac adds hastily when Derek raises his eyebrows. "Just… You know. You and Scott as boyfriends wouldn't be the worst thing ever. If that's what you wanted."

Derek sighs. "I'm not even thinking about that right now, okay? Scott…he's in love with Allison and I've got you." Isaac's scent shifts before the constipated expression starts to cross his face and Derek rolls his eyes. "The _pack_ , Isaac."

"Oh. Heh. Right." Isaac's smile is weaker than before but there. Then, looking around the loft again, "What about Erica and Boyd? It's going to be really tight with four of us." He looks suspiciously at Derek. "Unless you're giving up…?"

"No." Derek crosses to Isaac and wraps his hand around the nape of Isaac's neck, squeezing. "Nobody's giving up on anyone. Erica and Boyd, they still have parents." Isaac flinches and Derek kicks himself yet again for being a tactless asshole. "When we find them, they're probably be going home," he amends, "at least for a while. And if they need a place to stay…" He shrugs. "We'll manage. Plenty of packs live right on top of each other." 

To look at it, Derek's old house is plenty big but none of them—except maybe Stiles, who's probably seen the police reports—get how many of them were living there. It's not just that they _can_ , it was that they wanted to, a closeness Derek's bitten relatives had found weird and then slowly, gradually, came to embrace. 

Derek thinks of the four of them here, in the loft's limited space, and his heart quickens with an emotion he doesn't want to put a name to, shoving it promptly and violently out of his mind. 

Isaac looks doubtful, glancing around like he's measuring the apartment for an over-long couch, but he nods. 

"It's just a six month lease," Derek says, as much for his own benefit as Isaac's. "After that, we can think about what we want to do, what we need."

_Or if there's anyone left alive to live here._

☽ ☾ 

Scott flicks the ball up and at the goal. Stiles manages to get his crosse between the ball and the goal, but the force rips the stick out of his hands. Stiles hops up and down, cursing and blowing on his fingers.

"God _dammit_ , Scott, that's the third time!" Stiles abandons the goal and stomps over to the bench, throwing himself down on it and glaring daggers at Scott. "I thought we agreed that you weren't going to—" They're alone on the field and Scott can't hear anyone around them for further than even Stiles' voice can carry, but Stiles looks around warily and then lowers his tone. "…That you were going to take it easy with those _fast passes_?" He waggles his eyebrows and mugs furiously, like Scott doesn't already know what Stiles is talking about. 

Scott sighs and goes over to the bench too. "Sorry," he says, dropping his stick to the grass and grabbing his bottle of water. "I wasn't paying attention. I just forgot."

"Yeah, three fucking times." Stiles snatches the bottle away from Scott and jets a stream of lukewarm water into his mouth. He swishes it around for a couple seconds before spitting it into the grass. "So you want to keep pretending that we're practicing—in which case _I'm_ taking attacker, and you can goal for a while, or do you want to tell me what the hell is wrong?" He squirts more water in his mouth and, this time, swallows it.

Scott scuffs at the ground. "I don't know," he says, dully. "Nothing."

Even without a werewolf's nose, Scott can sense Stiles' disbelief, feels Stiles' eyes boring into his face like lasers. 

Scott sighs. "I went by Allison's house today. Somebody bought it. There's a big, old "SOLD" sign on the lawn." He lifts his hands, lets them drop limply back to his lap. 

Stiles is both honest enough and an awesome enough friend not to pretend that he doesn't understand. "Dude, that sucks. Why didn't you say something before?"

Scott's shoulders flex. "Felt stupid. And I didn't know if you'd care."

He probably deserves it when Stiles thwaps him on the back of the head. "Don't be a dumbass. Be upset all you want, but don't be dumb. Of course I freaking care."

"Yeah, I know." Scott scruffs the back of his neck, embarrassed now that he said it out loud. "Just…" Again that helpless lift and drop of his hands. "What if this is it? What if she never comes back, for real? All I've got is a bunch of pictures and this number on my phone that I promised I wouldn't call. And how long before that's gone, too? Some Star Trek computer voice telling me _'The number you have reached is no longer in service'_ and _'If you think you have reached this message in error, please try your call again.'_ "

"I don't know whether to be terrified or impressed that you have that memorized," Stiles comments. "Also, good job on the voice, by the way. Very soulless, sounded just like her."

Against his will, one side of Scott's mouth curls up in an almost smile. It only lasts a second, though, the sludgy coldness of missing Allison creeping back like a slime. "I mean…I could handle it, I think, if she never wanted to get back together, you know? If she was with someone else." He glances sideways at Stiles, looking for something, some confirmation that what he's saying is the truth and not just wishful bullshit. "But I don't know… What if I never even _see_ her again?" He hates the plaintive whininess of his voice, hates this bleeding raw feeling, too much, too naked, even for as good a friend—a brother—as Stiles. 

"Well, you said, you still have those pictures…" Stiles tries to joke, but he fades out when Scott looks at him. This must be what Derek's eyes feel like from the inside, Scott thinks, cold wolf eyes, even without the shift. 

Stiles sighs. "I don't know, man. You just… You go on with your life. I know it's a sucky answer, it's not the answer you want to hear, but…if she's really gone, she's really gone. And if it is some…" Stiles waves his hands, "star-crossed love for the ages or whatever, then you'll find her again. You'll find each other."

"You don't believe that," Scott scoffs.

"No," Stiles admits without a shred of shame about it. "But you do, and it's your freaking love story. What the hell do I know? Lydia barely knows I'm alive and I probably couldn't get laid at an orgy."

"That's not true," Scott objects, before half-turning and putting his hand on Stiles' shoulder in pretend concern. "Wait…is this an orgy with or without drugs?"

Stiles blows air out his lips and shoves Scott one-handed. Stiles isn't actually strong enough to push Scott, if Scott doesn't want to be moved, but he rolls with it, pretending to catch himself at the last second, before he can fall off the bench totally. 

"Besides," Stiles says, "you've always got your fuck buddy Derek, right? He'll never leave Beacon Hills. You can fuck him 'til your dick falls off."

"Don't—" Scott starts, before he means to and way harsher than he imagined. 

Stiles manages to look surprised and not-surprised at the same time, which seems like a pretty good trick. "Touchy," he says, the same sarcasm and smokiness of his feelings about Derek bleeding from his voice and skin. "Thought you were supposed to be more relaxed when you're getting fucked on a regular basis." 

"It's not that," Scott says, shaking his head. "I'm not… It's just, Derek…he's a friend now."

"Since when are we not allowed to make fun of our friends?" Stiles asks, eyebrows arching just about as high as they can go. "Because as far as I'm concerned, that's the main reason for having them."

"Okay, but, when it's Derek, you're not really making fun. You're jabbing at him and covering it up with humor."

"Well, _yeah_ ," Stiles agrees, spreading his hands. "Kinda what I do."

"Only with people you don't like."

"I'll admit it: I don't like him." Stiles lifts up and turns so he's facing Scott, one leg sideways on the bench. "Scott, have you forgotten all the stuff he did, all the stuff he did _to you_ , to me…how he was going to kill Jackson?" Stiles considers. "Which, okay, I've thought about it plenty of time myself, but you know what the difference is? _I would've only thought about it._ I wouldn't have actually, you know, _killed Jackson._ "

"He wasn't going to kill Jackson."

Stiles bounces on the bench, dragging both hands through his hair. "Oh, my, God! Like…are you in love with him? Is that what this is? Are you turning into one of those people that lets their abusive jackass boyfriend get away with murder— _literal murder!_ —because they just love him _so much?_ "

"Look, it's the past!" Scott says. "I get that Derek's done bad things. I'm not excusing his bad things. They were real, they happened. But it's different now. We're all on the same side. And I need you to get on board with that, because you're my best friend, man, you're my brother, and I need you, okay?" Scott's voice breaks. Just a little, but he hears it and he knows Stiles hears it, too. "I can't do this without you. I need you to be on my side." He bumps Stiles' knee with his knuckles. "Even if being on my side also means being on a side with Derek."

"I am on your side," Stiles says after a minute. "I'm on _your_ side. And I don't agree that I don't get to make fun of him. If he's going to be part of the team, he doesn't get special treatment. I get to treat him just like everyone else."

Scott tilts his head.

"Okay, anyone else who could break my neck with their pinkie," Stiles concedes. But this is my point: my razor wit is pretty much all I have!"

Scott snorts. "Okay, fine. No special treatment. Just…try to be less of a jerk to him, please?"

"I'll try," Stiles says doubtfully. "But I can't promise or anything."

☽ ☾ 

"So this is the new place?" Peter strolls to the middle of the room and poses, legs spread and arms crossed, tapping his forefinger thoughtfully against his pursed lips. "Hmm. Kind of dark and depressing, if you ask me—"

"No one did," Derek mutters, still trying to get the screw through the leg and body of the table. Whoever drilled these holes was fucking drunk. 

"—though I guess that's to be expected, mmm?" Peter continues as if he didn't hear, which Derek knows damn well he did. "Must remind you of home."

Derek slams the screwdriver into the floor and looks up at Peter, who's smirking. "What do you want?"

"Am I not allowed to express interest in my Alpha, and my only living nephew?" Peter asks.

"Would it matter if my answer was 'no'?" Derek gives up on the table leg for the moment and climbs to his feet, unwilling to be on his knees while Peter stands over him. 

Peter's smile broadens. "Mmm, no, probably not."

The elevator finishes clanking laboriously up and Isaac rakes back the gate, dragging out the dusty blue velvet sofa-bed he picked for himself. "What's he doing here?"

"Nothing," Derek says tiredly, going to help, because although Isaac can handle the weight of the sofa easily, it's still unwieldy. 

Peter prowls around the apartment, tsking over everything, while Isaac and Derek put the couch on the opposite side of the room from Derek's bed and where Isaac will have a good view of the elevator and the stairs in the same way he'd sleep in the train car where he could see all the doors. 

"That's everything," Isaac says, when he's got the couch positioned to his satisfaction. He pitches his voice low—which Derek could've told him not to bother, Peter can hear a mouse's whisker fall—but Derek appreciates the effort. "I need to get the cart back." He brushes fussily at a smudge of dirt from the trailer-cart that he'd borrowed from who-knows-where to transport their Salvation Army haul and glances warily at Peter, who is pretending to stare out the window. "You… Should I wait?"

Derek shakes his head. "Go ahead." 

The night that Isaac had run into Peter and the Alpha Pack twins at the movie, Derek had wanted to confront Peter—at least after he'd made sure that Scott and Stiles hadn't been followed home—but at the same time, the thought of it had made him tired, the entire, inconclusive and frustrating conversation playing out in his head and Scott's scent—Scott's come—all over him. 

Looks like he's run out of time on avoiding Peter. 

Isaac glances from Peter back to Derek, eyebrows asking a question. Derek shoves him gently in the direction of the elevator. "I'm the Alpha," he reminds Isaac.

Isaac nods, a quick, awkward duck of his head, and goes. Once the elevator sinks out of sight, Peter turns away from the window and they listen to it rattle down to the ground floor. When the last sounds of Isaac have left the building, Peter swings around toward Derek.

"Are you, though?" Peter asks, tapping his collarbone with his fingertips as he regards Derek narrowly. "Are you really?"

Derek spreads his stance, crosses his arms. "You spend too long on the wind-up," he says. "Get to the damned pitch."

Peter's face scrunches slightly in displeasure. The way he likes to play with his prey, you'd think he was a housecat, not a wolf. "It's nothing," Peter says with a shrug. "Nothing. I just wonder what the family would think—what Laura would think—about your behavior as Alpha."

"Well, as they're all dead, I don't imagine they think much at all," Derek says, because it's a weapon that cuts both ways. He sees it strike home in the way the skin around Peter's eyes tightens. It's not as satisfying as it should be, though. Like before, he just feels exhausted, done with it. "Say what you mean to say."

Peter spreads his hands. "I knew you were going to try and bring Scott into the fold," he says. "You're not so dumb you can't see the value in that. I just didn't know you were going to do it _with your ass._ "

"What bothers you more, that I let Scott fuck me or that I _like_ letting Scott fuck me?" Derek asks tightly, slowly walking across the room. "That your nephew is a _faggot_ or that your Alpha is?" Standing right in Peter's space, Derek lets his eyes flash, blood red. "Or is it that I take it up the ass _and_ I still managed to take the Alpha powers away from you?"

Peter's face tenses like he's going to snap at Derek but less than a second later, it drains, leaving just the smarmy-pleasant face he's always wearing. "Frankly, I'm amazed—I'm hurt—that you think _that's_ how I feel," Peter says quietly. 

Derek can't read Peter's scent like he can with Scott or Isaac, not since Peter came back, and though he can't bring himself to fully believe anything that comes out of Peter's mouth, the uncertainty comes creeping back, about what's true and what's a lie.

"Personally, I don't care who you have sex with. Or how," Peter adds, glancing down, between their bodies. 

Disgusted—and not totally sure who with—Derek turns away, goes back to the couch, throwing himself down on the rump-sprung velvet. 

"No, my concern is about bad tactics. The wisdom of trying to entangle a sixteen-year old—a very sentimental sixteen-year old through something as ephemeral as sex." Peter goes to slouch against the window like the Byronic hero he no doubt thinks of himself as. "Especially when he's still so deeply attached to the Argent girl."

"Allison's gone," Derek says, because he's an idiot who is apparently always going to be the Charlie Brown to Peter's Lucy. 

Peter's eyes widen, even as his faint smile lengthens. "But they're coming back. You…you hadn't heard?"

"No," Derek says, because there's no point in lying about it. His lips feel numb, just shaping that one word.

"Just in time for the new school year," Peter says, running his thumb along the edge of his nails before glancing over at Derek. "Guess she couldn't stand to stay away. Who can blame her? That Scott, he's quite the catch."

Derek shrugs, though it, too, feels distant and strange, a puppet being controlled by someone unseen, rather than a conscious gesture. "Maybe she's coming to finish what she started, and kill us all."

"She might, at that, if she hears what you've been doing with her boyfriend," Peter says, one side of his mouth hooking up.

"Scott's not her boyfriend and he makes his own decisions," Derek says, tipping his head back and given vent to a huge yawn. "If you're expecting to torture me with this information, you're going to have to try harder. Not only do I not care what Allison Argent does or doesn't do, I'm even less interested in the soap opera of her relationship with Scott. If he wants her, he's welcome to her."

"Mmm, such noble maturity!" Peter shakes his head briefly, before tilting it to the side and fixing Derek with a sharp look. "Or sickening martyrdom, I'm not sure which, though I have my suspicions."

"I don't need Scott to get laid," Derek bristles. 

"No, of course not. Isaac's still young enough, naïve enough, to worship you. That could work out really well for you! Or was that your plan the whole time, and that's why there's only one bed."

Derek growls, he can't help it, the sound grinding out from the depths of his gut.

"…And that's my cue to leave," Peter says, moving with carefully measured speed away from the windows. When he's standing across from Derek, though, he stops, an expression on his face and in his eyes that Derek doesn't know how to interpret. "You know, starting your own pack is probably the most selfish thing you've ever done in your whole life," Peter sighs, shaking his head regretfully. 

Derek stares back, unsure where the trap is, where Peter's going with this.

"And you don't even know how sad that is." Peter's voice changes, softer, rougher. He sounds tired. He sounds like the uncle Derek thought he knew, and though Derek doesn't want it to, it aches, the same as when he scrolls past Laura's name in his phone or looks for her next to him. In every way that counts, the Peter Derek knew died in the fire, same as everyone else.

"On the other hand, look how it's turned out." He glances around at the apartment one last time then whistles his way to the stairs, a ghost Derek can't seem to exorcise. 

"Enjoy the new digs!"

☽ ☾ 

It's the first time in Derek's new bed. Scott's finger is in him and it's good and it's uncomfortable and Scott's watching, dilated eyes drifting from the slow pump of his finger to Derek's face and Derek _wants_ it, wants to get lost in sensation and stop _thinking_ so goddamn much, but he can't, he can't.

And finally, Scott sits back on his knees, pulling out, and says, "I can't… You're so tight, I'm afraid I'm going to hurt you."

"You can't hurt me, Scott," Derek scoffs. He pulls his legs up to his chest, a position that Nichos always liked. "C'mon, let's just go. It'll be fine."

Scott does look suitably impressed/hypnotized by the move, the finger that was just in Derek circling his rim and glancing across his hole with a gentle intentness that makes Derek shiver and his skin break out in gooseflesh. But when he looks back to Derek's face, Scott says, "Actually, I was thinking maybe going another way?"

"And what's that?" Derek lets his legs back down to splay on either side of Scott. 

"I was thinking. I," Scott's tongue swipes his bottom lip, a gesture that looks both nervous and hungry at the same time, and Derek feels a corresponding tug in his gut. "Maybe I could try, what you did to me. With your mouth."

Derek frowns. "In English?"

Scott sighs so hard his shoulders drop, his face slowly coloring a deep, beet red. "I want to rim you."

"To rim me," Derek repeats, because he can't have heard that right. 

It's Scott's turn to scowl. "That's the right word, yeah?" The flush spreads to his neck, his shoulders, the Red-Hots cinnamon smell of him overpowering the bitter smell of the pearl of pre-come nestled so perfectly in his slit. "If I want to, if I was going to…?" He gestures at Derek, spread out in front of him. "A rim job?"

Derek fights not to smile, because there's no way that Scott won't take it the wrong way. "Yeah," he says, husky with the struggle. "That's the right word." He doesn't think Scott will take it any better if he asks, _Really?_ , or _Are you sure?_ though that's there, in the back of his throat, too. 

Maybe Scott senses it anyway, though, because he skims his thumb over Derek's hole again, his face and voice a little dreamy as he says, "It's just… You smell…" Scott closes his eyes and inhales deeply, like Derek's a perfume or one of Melissa's meals. "I don't know." Scott shakes his head without opening his eyes. "I just want to…"

Scott makes a little noise in his throat and leans down without any more preamble, mouthing at the base of Derek's cock, soft, careful sucks at Derek's nuts that, even so, make Derek's toes curl and his abs tense up tight with the intensity. Scott pushes Derek's thigh out, spreading Derek wider for his mouth as he travels downward, wet, sloppy, making greedy little noises. 

Derek's head slams back to the mattress, suddenly so hard he thinks he might blow a load just like this, with nothing on his dick but Scott's absent and unmoving hand, holding it out of his way as he licks and suckles Derek's taint. 

Derek's been rimmed before, but only a couple times. Other werewolves, none of them would've stooped so low and most of the humans find it dirty, disgusting…though they all like it well enough when it's Derek doing the doing. Derek hadn't minded; he likes doing it, he doesn't need the favor returned. 

At the first hot slither of Scott's tongue across his hole, Derek grunts and then cries out, shrill and oddly bird-like, grabbing onto the sheet hard enough he hears the cloth rip. Scott hums, incredible, buzzing vibration, like he's pleased and rubs his thumbs on either side of his tongue, urging Derek to open for him, his mouth. 

Thinking is no longer a problem; it's not something Derek's even capable of, helpless and writhing as Scott devours him, soft, silky laps and the teasing, sensitizing scratch of teeth alternating with the muscular push in, in, _in_ , force and persuasion both. Scott's hands hold Derek down, hold him stead, even when it's too much and Derek tries to escape it, shattering under the relentlessness of Scott's invasion, of how deep into him Scott goes, deeper than anyone, ever. 

"Shh," Scott says, blowing into Derek, warm but shocking. "Shh, it's okay…"

All at once, Derek hears his own voice, too, realizes he's been talking—begging—a hoarse, cracking, "Please…please, please…" that terrifies Derek because he knows that voice, the voice of his inmost self, the one he never lets anyone— _anyone_ \--hear, no matter how often it echoes in his own ears. 

"Just fuck me," Derek says instead, trying—hoping—to override that scared, wanting voice, hoping Scott won't be able to tell the difference. "Scott, please…just fuck me. Breed me, fuck me."

Scott groans and the bed jerks, but he doesn't try to fence things around with words, he just kneels up, between Derek's legs and then guides himself in, spearing deep, his face red and amber flickering in and out of his irises. He looks like a man, full-grown and strong, and Derek accepts him as such, tipping his hips up to let Scott sink home, taking him. 

"Oh, God," Scott breathes, planting his right hand on the mattress next to Derek's head and cinching tight to Derek's hip with the left. He slams into Derek and Derek snaps up to meet him, tightening around Scott's cock, thick, unyielding, and hungry, so hungry. 

Derek lets Scott's hunger wash through him, rides it same as he rides the dick inside him, molded by it, reshaped. 

Scott snarls, then shoves his right arm under Derek's back, hooking onto his shoulder for better closeness, better leverage, weight pressing Derek deeper into the bed. Derek wraps his arms around Scott and leans up, nuzzling at Scott's messy lips, licking like a pup, and tasting himself.

"D—" Scott starts, starting to turn his face away, but when Derek doesn't reel back in disgust, when Derek's hands urge him on, Scott lunges, tongue stabbing deep into Derek's mouth, his teeth pressed to Derek's skin. They kiss until even Derek is lightheaded, and then Scott pulls back just enough to rasp, "You… Fuck… Fuck, _you_ …" His mouth covers Derek's again, the heavy slap of his body into Derek's as steady and no louder than the throb of Derek's pulse in his ears. 

Derek comes like freefall, like drowning, weightless and torn out of his skin, beautiful and perfect for this one moment of time. 

Sad reality comes back all too soon as Scott jerks roughly out of him. Derek lies there limply, ready for whatever Scott does next.

Or so he thinks, but he doesn't expect it when Scott fists his cock in a hard, brutal blur, his cry and his come ejecting from him at the same time. Thick jets of white stripe Derek's body, covering the glisten where their bellies smeared Derek's jizz between them. 

Scott sways on his knees, panting, satisfaction scrawled on his face and oozing sweaty from his skin until Derek wants to preen, stretching his body, offering it up. 

Scott drags his spread fingers through the mess, Derek arching up in an unspoken _yes_. He's ready for it when Scott's fingers push between his lips, the explosion of taste of the both of them. He holds Scott's wrist and laves it clean, every millimeter of skin, the ridges of the knuckles, the prophetic furrows of the palm. 

Scott goes willingly onto his back when Derek guides him, though he makes a strangled noise and flings his arm over his eyes when Derek starts in on his chest, the tight puckers of his nipples and then the widespread smudge of Derek's spunk. He tongues it from Scott's belly and then follows the damp hair trail down…

"Derek." Scott's fingers close on Derek's shoulder, his head lifted out from the blindfold of his arm so he can meet Derek's eyes. 

"I want to," Derek says simply and waits, looking back, letting Scott see the truth of it in his face. 

Scott's eyebrows tug in over his nose, but his fingers slip from Derek's shoulder to knuckle lightly over Derek's cheek. Derek tilts his face into the touch, nuzzling his cheek into Scott's hand. 

"Okay," Scott says finally, hoarsely. His thumb marks out the line of Derek's bottom lip before he lets himself fall back to the mattress. "Okay."

Scott shivers when Derek first touches him with his tongue, not fully soft yet and likely very sensitive. Derek's gentle as he cleans Scott's cock, but thorough, gathering every combination of the flavor of him and Scott, unable to stop the low, satisfied noises he makes with each new taste. 

When he reaches Scott's balls, Scott lunges up again, this time grabbing a fistful of Derek's hair. "Enough," he grits. Almost immediately, Scott's contrite, tender, touching Derek's face again. "It's enough," he says. "C'mere."

He stretches Derek out next to him, leaning his face on Derek's shoulder and his hand spanning Derek's stomach, rubbing in the last of their mingled come like a lotion. The quiet in Derek's head, the stillness inside his body, it's glorious, and Derek closes his eyes, relishing it as Scott pets him. 

"Every time I think it can't get more crazy," Scott murmurs. "And then…" Before Derek can pull himself fully back into his skin, before he can tense up at Scott's words, Scott adds, "That was _amazing._ "

Derek smiles without opening his eyes, a liquid warmth just under his surface. 

Scott presses a dry kiss into Derek's chest. "Thank you."

Derek hums, in lieu of a response. 

Amazing.

☽ ☾ 

Scott jolts out of sleep and blinks in owlish confusion at the strangeness. The bluish aquarium quality of the light, the overpowering dust and rust stench in the air…nothing's familiar except the scent of the body lying slack in his arms. Scott puts his face close and inhales. _Derek._ It's Derek, and when he can remember that, he remembers where he is: the loft. Derek's new bed in Derek's new loft.

Scott lifts his head. The loft itself is plunged in blackness, the only light comes from outside, streetlight and city glow mottled and muted by the dirt encrusted on the ceiling high bank of windows. Of course Derek wouldn't have anything as mundane as an alarm clock or cable box or anything that might tell Scott what time it is and Scott doesn't remember where he left his phone…or his jeans, for that matter. He can tell that it's late, though, a weight and a taste to the evening that tells Scott he ought to be thinking about getting home. He'd come by Derek's to show off his new dirt bike and things had ended up…

Well. Where had they ended up?

Scott lets his head fall back to the pillow and strokes his fingers down Derek's flank, marveling at it, marveling at everything that goes along with it. He'd wanted peace with Derek, but what he's gotten has become so much bigger, so much more. 

So much more complicated. 

Scott sighs and Derek stirs, stretching luxuriously against Scott and then tensing. "It's me," Scott says.

Derek slides away far enough he can roll on his back and look Scott in the face. "I know," he says, voice still a little thick with sleep. "I just wasn't sure you'd still be here." He lifts his head. "Where's Isaac?"

Scott shakes his head. There's old traces of Isaac in the apartment, but nothing more recent than their fuck, no sound of anyone else in the loft. "I don't know. Not here."

Derek drops back with a sharp exhale, staring up at the ceiling.

"Is everything okay?"

Derek shrugs. "Yeah. Fine." He glances at Scott. "It's late. I can give you a ride, if you want to get home."

Scott shrugs. "I'm not in a hurry. Unless…you want me to go?" It is the second time Derek's mentioned it. 

"No." Derek shakes his head, the corners of his mouth curling like smiling is an expression he's trying out for size. 

And maybe he is. The sex…it'd felt good, _right_ , and Scott could tell—sense—that it'd been the same with Derek. It felt like he'd been able to feel—know—everything Derek was feeling and Scott doesn't know whether it's because they're both werewolves, with more than the usual access to their senses, or because it is—it's becoming—something more. 

"Good," Scott says, meaning it. "I had fun tonight."

Immediately, Scott wants to roll his eyes. Fun is such a terrible, _stupid_ word to use, a kid's word for something definitely not kid-like. 

But Derek just lets his smile broaden. "Yeah, me too."

Scott puts his hand on Derek's belly. He can't still feel his—their—come, but he knows it's there, a knowledge that pulses hotly under his skin and he rubs the soft skin, fighting back the urge to bend his head and bite. "So…this is okay? This is still what you want?"

Derek snorts. "Your ass is safe, McCall."

Scott hitches a laugh and shakes his head. "Not what I mean." Though, to be truthful, he isn't totally sure what he means, a roil of _something_ below his surface calm that he's a little afraid to fully look at. 

_…you don't sell your house if you're planning on coming back, you don't leave if people really mean to you what you say they do, I bet Derek wouldn't just leave someone that he loved, really loved…_

Scott shrugs. "Just…you're okay with not having sex with anyone else? You're not…I don't know. Chafing?"

What is he even doing?? Is he asking Derek—Derek Hale—to…what? Go steady, like this is one of his mom's movies? Is he deficient, or just a glutton for punishment?

Derek's nose scrunches a little, the still-lingering smile falters, but he says, "Have to see how it feels when I get up and try to walk—" Scott splutters, hiding his face in Derek's shoulder as he giggles, "—but yeah, I'm good." He touches Scott's shoulder and Scott glances back up again. "This is good."

And is Derek _agreeing_? Or is he just being nice? Which…Scott can't quite make Derek and nice work in the same sentence, but the whole world seems to have been turned topsy-turvy anyway, so why not that?

Scott nods jerkily, because he can't think of anything that's not _incredibly dumb_ to say and he sprawls back as close to being on his back as he can get without taking his hand off Derek's stomach. 

He wonders what his mom would say if he came clean with her, that the person Derek is seeing—is having sex with—is him. She wouldn't be happy, for sure; for all she's softened on Derek, he's still a lot older than Scott and kind of a mess. 

Except that's not really true, either, is it? The car, the apartment, even coming to Scott's mom's dinners…Derek started out a train wreck, sure, but he's trying to put something together, a life. A life for him and Isaac. 

And if Scott could present it to his mom like that, if she gets how hard Derek's trying, then maybe she won't completely blow a gasket.

…or maybe Scott doesn't really have to tell her at all. Maybe there's nothing to tell. Sure, Derek wants him when it's sex, but who wouldn't want good—great—sex. It doesn't mean he wants anything else from Scott. 

And it doesn't mean Scott's ready or willing to give up on Allison. 

Even thinking about it feels like bad juju, like he's asking for trouble, asking for those last thin avenues of hope to be cut off. If Allison is it, his one and only, his mate, why is he even thinking about trying to make a go of it with someone else? With Derek?

Allison hates Derek. If she ever found out that he was the one Scott turned to, that Scott has feelings for Derek, after Derek bit her mom…

_…not that it's Derek's fault, he came for me, he saved me, nobody made Mrs. Argent kill herself…_

Derek puts his hand over Scott's, not holding hands exactly, but not _not_ -holding hands, either. When Scott turns his head, Derek asks, "What?"

"The Argents sold their house," Scott says, a sentence that vomits out of him, that feels like vomit, sour and bile-bitter, coming from his mouth. "Not just for-sale, it's sold."

Derek's face goes back to its familiar blank and Scott gets it, he does, but he doesn't want to have to look at it, so he pulls his hand away and sits up, looping his arms over his knees. 

Derek scoffs, legs crossing and a whump of pillows as he settles his upper body, but Scott doesn't bother to look. "In case you forgot, the Argents—including your girlfriend—have all tried to kill me, more than once," Derek says.

"She's not my girlfriend," Scott says, automatically, and then stumbles to a halt, wondering for the first time if that's not more true than he's always meant.

Derek is silent for a long, awkward moment too, before he finally finishes, "Just don't expect me to cry about anything that takes the Argents out of Beacon Hills."

"I don't." Scott shakes his head, looking out into the cavernous darkness of the loft. "And it's not that." 

"No?"

Scott glances sidelong at Derek, unbends enough to put his hand on Derek's hip, stroking the soft, smooth skin with his thumb. "I just… I need to figure out what's going on with the rest of my life, if she's really not coming back. I thought…" Scott makes a gesture somewhere between a headshake and a shrug, not wanting to go into his stupid teenage fantasies with Derek, for more reasons than being afraid Derek will mock him. "How long do you hang onto a dream?" 

Scott sighs and then taps his fingers on Derek's hipbone, making himself smile. "Anyway," I really should be getting home. I don't want my mom to get home and wonder where I am."

He wonders if his thoughts—of making things more real with Derek, of telling his mom—are just fantasies of a different kind, as ridiculous and ultimately unrealistic as the idea that he and Allison are meant for each other. 

Derek crawls off the mattress at the same time as Scott. "Let me get dressed," Derek says, "I'll drive you."

"Nah." Scott feels stupidly close to crying and although that's a dangerous way to go driving around the city, it's better than having Derek see him do it. "I got my bike." Once he finds his clothes, Scott dresses in record time, shoving his foot in his sneaks and straightening up to find Derek watching him. "I'll be okay. Thanks."

Derek's hand lifts halfway, like he's going to protest, but he drops it and says, "Okay."

The elevator is an ancient, clanking thing that makes Scott feel claustrophobic, so he gives Derek a brief wave and goes toward the stairs. He's most of the way there when Derek calls out, "Scott!"

"Yeah?" He hears Derek moving and still, it's a surprise when Derek crashes into him when he's only turned halfway. Derek wrenches Scott's face around and kisses him, a hard, deep ravaging that legit makes Scott's knees go weak. He clings to Derek's shoulders, unable to think past that—just holding on—until Derek pulls back, just far enough that he can look Scott in the eyes.

"The answer is: as long as you need to," Derek says, and Scott has _no idea_ what he's talking about. The answer to what? "You hang onto a dream as long as you need to."

Derek gives Scott a push away and, for a second, Scott's not totally sure he's going to stay on his feet, still oxygen-starved and stuck on _what the hell just happened?_ as Derek stalks to the other end of the loft and throws himself down, out of sight, on his bed. 

"Okay," Scott says, uncertainly. "Well. See you later!"

Though he feels a little drunk and wobbly as he starts down the stairs, it's a long way to the bottom. So by the time he hits the lobby, Scott feels steadier and—beneficially, yesterday's Word of the Day--much less like crying, though still terminally confused about…well, everything. 

Derek's building is still more than two-thirds empty and undergoing renovation, one of the reasons Derek chose it. Scott had pulled his little dirt bike into the lobby and chained it to a defunct radiator, rather than chance leaving it outside. 

He's on his knees, unwinding the chain from around the heavy steel curves of the radiator when the purr of Peter Hale's voice—"Scott McCall. I should've expected to see you here…"—has him leaping to his feet and away, putting his back against the solid stone wall, his eyes itching as they flash. 

Peter regards Scott with blank amazement. Or is it amusement? "Such an extreme reaction," Peter murmurs. "I don't know whether to feel flattered or laugh. I'm no threat to you, Scott."

"No?" Scott snarls, fingers flexing as he fights not to shift, right here, where anyone could see him. "Lurking in dark corners in the middle of the night is a crappy way to convince somebody of that!"

Peter spreads his hands, _what?_ "I'm just here to see my nephew." 

"In the middle of the night?" Scott repeats, skeptical. 

"Wolf's hours." Peter shrugs carelessly. Then: "Though, as you point out, if it is so terribly late, what are you doing here?" Before Scott can even figure out a response, Peter holds up one hand. "Oh, right. I forgot. Derek's 'big plan'."

Even though he's one-hundred percent sure he's walking into a trap, Scott can't help but ask, "What big plan?"

Peter widens his eyes at Scott. "The same plan he's had all along, of course: get you to join his pack. Just this time he decided to use the carrot instead of the stick. Oh. Wait." Peter holds up his hand again. "From what I hear, it's you giving _him_ the carrot, isn't it?" Peter's gaze dips south to Scott's dick and Scott clenches his fingers to keep from covering himself like a scared virgin. 

"That's disgusting," Scott spits.

"I thought so, too," Peter says, nodding. "He is so much older than you. And an Alpha. But hey, whatever works!" Peter smiles, bright and friendly, if you don't know what a monster he is. "From everything I hear from the packs out East, my nephew is _very good_ at trading on his good looks for what he needs. I'm surprised he didn't try this first."

_"Shut up!"_ The snarling depth of Scott's voice surprises even him as he rushes Peter, shoves him into the opposite wall, his claws ripping holes in Peter's shirt. "You shut up about him!"

"I see I touched a nerve," Peter observes, not resisting, looking down at Scott's hands and the tears in his shirt as if it's an especially interesting TV show. "Maybe it wasn't such a stupid plan as I said, after all." He looks back up at Scott, blue eyes clear, guileless. "It's all completely true, you know. One of the pack leaders, Nichos, kept Derek like his pet for more than a year." Peter tilts his head. "You don't seem like the pet type, though."

Scott pushes Peter away, hard. Still not fighting back, Peter crashes into the tile and then slides back into the darkness. As much as Scott wants to commit some horrible act of violence on Peter, he can't bring himself to do it cold, when Peter refuses to resist, to fight back with anything except his poisonous words.

_Sticks and stones may break my bones…_

Growling, Scott grabs his bike and jerks the last length of chain loose, shoving the door to the outside open with his front tire. 

As Scott's mounting up, Peter comes to stand in the doorway, thumbing a trickle of blood from his nose and holding it up for inspection. "I hope I didn't hurt your feelings!" he calls, over the high, rattling gun of the bike's engine. "As the one who bit you, I still feel _very_ fond of you. I just thought you'd want to know!"

Scott spits a curse under his breath and wheels away as fast as his bike's engine can take him.

☽ ☾ 

Derek hears it all.

Listening for Scott to make it safely out of the building, for the buzz of his little dirt bike fading into the distance, Derek hears the entire conversation, hears Peter tangling outright lies with strategically pruned truth—truth Derek didn't want anyone, but especially Scott, knowing—hears Peter systematically shattering the spun-sugar thing Derek hadn't even had the courage to name hope, until it was pissing away down the drain. 

Of course, Derek might have tossed it all away himself, with that bullshit about hanging onto your dreams. He knows what Scott's dreams are: Allison's soft, human curves, a marriage, kids…probably in the same house he and Melissa are living in now.

They're good dreams. Well…Allison Argent wouldn't be Derek's choice for Scott, but the dream itself: a good life, a happy life, a normal life…it's what Derek should want for Scott, what he _does_ want for Scott.

_…except he doesn't, he doesn't want that at all, he wants to tangle Scott in his life, snare him in it, he wants Scott to pull him up and he wants to drag Scott down, he wants to fuck Scott up, so that no one else will want him, no one else can have him, because that's the only way he's even got a shot in hell…_

Scott didn't ask for any of this. He doesn't want it. He deserves to be happy. 

Scott doesn't come upstairs. Not for answers or accusations. When his bike drones away, Derek keeps listening, but Peter doesn't come up either. A part of Derek wants to tear Peter into little pieces and then burn the remains on a pyre of wolfsbane and mountain ash, but he doesn't move. 

Because what's the point, really? 

This is how it was always going to go down, the brilliant illustration of how he and Scott are never going to meet in the same place, never going to be running on the same track. Hell, Peter probably did Derek a favor. At least this way, Derek doesn't have to deal with Scott's sad, puppy eyes as he apologizes for something they both know is inevitable. He can just get back to Scott hating him, pitying him, a clean break. 

It's what he needs, just a clean break. 

Scott's scent is on the sheets and pillows and quilt, still on his skin. Derek doesn't know how long he lies there, not sleeping, not thinking, not feeling. 

_Playing statue_ , Laura used to call it, usually with annoyance. She'd throw things at him, trying to jar him out of it, starting small—maybe the wrapper from a straw, a wadded up paper napkin—but gradually escalating as she got angrier. Once, she'd gotten pissed enough to throw a flowerpot at his head, a little sprig of basil he'd been nursing up with the idea that they could use it to cook with. 

The bleeding gash had lasted a lot less time than Laura's contrition and Derek tried to be better, but he's never stopped, not completely. 

He doesn't know how long it is, but the darkness of the sky is pearly when Derek finally makes himself get up, clawing the linen from the bed, wadding it all down the garbage chute. He's been sleeping in a train depot and the burned out wreck of his family home. He doesn't need sheets or blankets or pillows. 

Next stop is the coffin-like shower, using up the entire bar of soap, scrubbing himself clean. It's a transparent ploy, pathetic, but Derek's clearly not above pathos. 

Can't deny that he feels less like puking his guts when he gets out, though. 

The pound of the water against the shower's metal sides and the thick pungency of the soap and steam dulled Derek's senses. When he comes back into the main room of the loft, Isaac's standing there.

"What happened to your bed?" Isaac asks, at the same time Derek snarls, "Where the hell have you been?"

The silence splats between them like an uncooked egg, a mess no one wants to clean up. 

"I told you I was going out," Isaac says finally.

Derek roars—a relatively soft one, considering the churning fire in his chest—and his eyes flash a red reflection of that burn. "Don't," Derek warns. "Don't treat me as if I'm stupid. I'm your Alpha, not your father."

It strikes home. Isaac's eyes get wider at the same time his jaw turns mulish. 

"Where were you?" Derek asks again, a shivering, dark promise in the softness of his voice. 

Derek doesn't know what he expects the answer to be. A girl, a boy, shoplifting, joyriding, Fight Club…

Isaac shifts his stance, breaks eye contact and looks off toward the windows as he mutters, "I was looking for the Alpha Pack."

"Are you _mental_?" Derek isn't trying to hurt Isaac, really he isn't, but he finds himself pinning Isaac to the nearest pillar with his hands, pressing him there, as if by doing so, he can somehow keep Isaac _(alive)_ out of trouble. "Are you fucking _dumb_?" He's in Isaac's face, he's shouting, little flecks of his spit glistening on Isaac's skin. "Have I not been sufficiently graphic about how _completely dangerous_ these people are?"

"I know that!" Isaac says, his eyes darting everywhere except Derek's face. "I've been being careful."

Derek pushes away from Isaac, choking on the desire to laugh. "Tell me how you were careful," he says, crossing his arms. "Tell me about your amazing ninja skills of invisibility, Isaac, I really want to know."

Isaac stares at Derek. "Why are you so mad?" he asks, instead of answering the question. "I didn't find them, so what does it matter?"

Derek ignores it when Isaac flinches, though he tries to keep his hands gentle when he clamps on Isaac's shoulders again. "This isn't like you trying to keep an eye on Scott, or the stuff with the kanima, Isaac. This is real. This is serious. The Alphas…they have destroyed _whole packs_. They leave nothing in their wake but bodies and destruction." He bores his gaze into Isaac's, willing Isaac to listen to him, to understand. 

"But I saw them," Isaac says, "I scented them. If I could find them again, if I could figure out where they're hiding…"

"No." Derek shakes his head. "Absolutely not. I don't want you anywhere near them."

"But I can do this!" Isaac insists. "I don't… You say we're a pack, that I'm part of this, part of the pack, but you keep…" His face works, fair skin flushing pink.

"Protecting you?" Derek asks. 

Isaac huffs, flexing his shoulders in mute request to be let go, and Derek does, taking a couple steps back to give Isaac some breathing room. 

"What do you think Alpha means?" Derek asks. "You think it means I just order you around for my own amusement? Do you think this is fun for me?"

"No!" Isaac gives Derek a look, wry and old beyond his years. At least he doesn't look afraid anymore. "No, I know it's not." He crosses his arms, more like he's hugging himself than defensiveness. "But that's the whole point. I can do this. You've been…b-busy," Isaac stumbles and Derek can hear just fine what Isaac's not saying: _you've been busy fucking Scott,_ "and…I need to do something. I need to feel like I'm not just sitting on my hands while Boyd and Erica…while my _friends_ are in trouble."

Isaac might not have wanted Erica, but he'd been hurt, a little, when she and Boyd had hooked up; he'd chosen to stay, when Boyd and Erica had decided to leave—Derek, the pack, Beacon Hills—so friends feels like a bit of a stretch, but Derek can't fault Isaac when his own reaction has been much the same. 

"You don't know what you're facing," Derek says instead. "It's too dangerous." Isaac's face starts to fall and Derek throws the only rope he has to offer. "The pack should do this together."

"What pack?" Isaac mumbles, still looking down. 

"Hey." Derek grabs Isaac's sleeve and he means for it to be casual, but Isaac seems to take it as a _come here,_ moving in against Derek's side. Derek curls his arm around Isaac's shoulders. 

"I'm not going to stop," Isaac insists doggedly. "You can yell at me, hit me—beat me—or chain me up, if that's what you're going to do, but I won't stop. I'll find a way."

"I'm not going to do any… Okay, I might yell at you," Derek concedes, because let's be real. "But only if you're being dumb, taking stupid risks, like looking for the Alpha Pack without fucking _telling me_. What if they'd captured you, too?" He makes Isaac look up, look at him. "You're all the pack I have left."

"You have Peter," Isaac says, though he sounds as doubtful about it as Derek feels. "You have Scott."

Even sort of expecting it, it's like a gut-punch. "Scott isn't pack," Derek says firmly, the words coming out surprisingly easy around the giant rock in his chest. "Scott and I…that was always temporary. It's nothing. It's done."

Isaac slants a clearly skeptical glance at Derek but he at least has the wisdom not to ask. 

"I don't protect you because I think you're weak," Derek goes on. "I protect you because you're family. We're all we have left. We're the only hope Boyd and Erica have. We've got to work together."

"Just let me help," Isaac says. "Don't leave me out, don't leave me at home. It's my fight, too."

If it comes to a choice, Derek knows which one of them is going down, but there's no reason he has to say that to Isaac who, like Scott, deserves his chance at happiness. 

"Yeah," Derek says. "Okay. We'll fight them together."

☽ ☾ 

It's another three days before Derek sees Scott, which is sooner than he expects…and maybe sooner than he's ready for, given the way his gut fists up at the first scent of Scott, the sight of the dirt bike chained up in the lobby like time has suddenly reversed.

Isaac glances at Derek, nostrils flaring. "Should I go?"

There's a part of Derek that wants to say no, to say that it doesn't matter if Scott's here, that there's nothing that they have to say that Isaac can't overhear…but the truth is that he doesn't want Isaac privy to this part of him. He doesn't know which Derek is going to present himself for scrutiny, doesn't know what Scott is going to be waiting for him in the loft. 

Isaac needs him strong.

"Yeah," Derek says briefly, with a short nod. "Just, like…an hour or so, and then check in with me."

Isaac nods and claps Derek's shoulder, squeezing for a long, heartfelt moment before he elbows the lobby door open and heads back out into the blazing sunshine. 

Derek contemplates the elevator and then the long, ill-lit spiral of the stairs. He takes the stairs. 

He expects Scott to be in the apartment itself—an expectation that doesn't make a whole lot of sense, in retrospect, given that he'd closed and locked the big sliding door—but of course, Scott's not, waiting instead on the top step with his arms looped loosely over his knees.

He must have heard and smelled Derek coming, so there's no surprise on his face when Derek rounds the final curve, but he waits to get to his feet until Derek's just a half-dozen steps down, his face remote and serious: all business. 

It's better than the blazing anger that Derek had been expecting, but it's also an answer to a question Derek's heart insisted on asking…and not the answer he'd hoped for, despite everything. 

It feels like there's bile coating the back of his throat and every word that comes for it as he offers, "You don't have to say it." He comes within a couple stairs of Scott, unable to resist getting at least that close, and putting them, more or less, on a level. "I know what Peter told you. It was true, everything he said. It was true."

If anything, that just makes Scott look more pissed, but what he says is: "Do we have to do this in the hallway?"

Derek shrugs and steps past Scott, fumbling with the unfamiliar weight of keys, multiple. He gets the loft door open and rolled back, gesturing for Scott to precede him. Scott goes all the way to the windows, to where Derek finally got the stupid table put together, hoisting himself up on its surface and kicking his heels restlessly. It feels more like Stiles than Scott, who's generally very respectful of furniture, and Derek rubs the spot between his eyebrows where he gets phantom pains, wondering if this is some kind of hallucination or if he's maybe dreaming. 

"So everything Peter said was true?" Scott demands, as if Derek hadn't already copped to it, as much as it turned his stomach to do so. "Everything?"

Derek shrugs, spreading his hands and then letting them flop. "Yeah."

"Bullshit." Scott doesn't curse a whole lot, either—mostly during sex, when anyone would be forgiven—so it's kind of shock when he spits the word at Derek, his hands white-knuckled on the table's edge. 

_Hey, I just bought that table…_ Derek thinks, but if Scott wants to destroy it, if he needs to, it's no less than he deserves.

"You're not even going to defend yourself, are you?" Scott asks, leaning forward, his eyes human-normal, but with all the force of his wolf behind them. "You'd let me walk out of here, thinking all that was true. And why? Do you even know why?"

This is the thing about fighting with Scott; he keeps changing the ground and forcing Derek to always chase after him until he can ambush from blind corners, using Derek against himself. 

"What do you want?" Derek asks. "You know everything there is to know…why are you even here?"

Scott buries his face in his hands then, slowly, scrapes them back, up and over the bristle of his hair. "I came to tell you that this is over," Scott says finally. "We're over."

There. Now it's real, now it's said.

It feels like there should be so much more to it, but there never really is. The entire world can burn in mere seconds. Derek tosses his hands up again. "Message received."

"Okay, but _not_ for the reasons you think!" Scott says. "Yeah, I believed Peter…for about thirty seconds. But only for thirty seconds. I know you better than that, man. You're not…" He holds out a hand toward Derek. "Look, you're not a planner, okay? You're not going to…to seduce somebody to get what you want."

"You know that, do you?"

"Yeah," Scott says, that rock-solid conviction of his underpinning his every word and the otherwise confusing tangle of his scent. "I do. Not when physical violence would do."

The smile that pushes at Derek's mouth almost hurts. 

"Peter…he's the seducer, the one that charms and lies, wrapping it up in half-truths…I do know that. If one of you was going to try to, to charm me into the pack, it would be Peter."

For a moment, they share a look of mutual horror at the thought. Then Scott grins and Derek finds himself smiling back, some thin-ice brittleness inside cracking and thawing. He lifts himself onto the table next to Scott. 

"I wanted…" Scott starts, and then stops, looking down at the floor. The fluctuation of his smell makes it hard for Derek to pin an emotion to it but he can't help an ember of warmth at the idea that this might actually be hard for Scott in some way. 

Scott takes a deep breath and then lifts his head, angling it to look at Derek full-on. "If…if I'd said to you, that last night, that I wanted to try, that I wanted…" His fingers make a shape, in the empty space between them, "for it not to be just about sex, that I wanted something real…what would you have said?"

"No," Derek says, shaking his head. "You've already made up your mind. You came here to end it. You don't get to play what if games in my head when it's already done."

"But what would you have said?" Scott presses.

_Yes. I would've said yes._ Derek puts his hands together between his knees, squeezing until the bones ache in protest. "I don't know."

Scott nods, seeming to accept this answer. "Yeah," he says. "Me either." 

The bitter tang of the lie burns Derek's nostrils; when his teeth gnaw his bottom lip, he thinks he can taste it, too. It's horrible, it's delicious. 

"The thing is," Scott says, "I don't know… What we are. It's not what we were. But when Peter said it, when he lied…" Scott shakes his head, picking at his jeans. "I only believed him for thirty seconds, but for thirty seconds, _I believed him._ I believed you would do that to me."

Derek nods, still looking at his hands, big, meaty, killer's hands. Scott has every reason to think the worst of him, it shouldn't surprise him when Scott does. 

Scott's fingers on Derek's knee is like a shock, bigger than a static charge. Derek's head swings sideways and Scott's eyes snare him. "Not because of now," Scott clarifies. "But we can't erase all the other stuff, the stuff from our past. 

"I don't know yet if Allison's my past," Scott continues, "I know I'm not ready to put her there. Not yet. Maybe not ever, but definitely not yet."

Derek nods again. Nothing to say to that, no surprise there. 

It is a surprise when Scott's hand moves from Derek's knee to his wrist, tugging until Derek's fingers come apart and Scott can lace his through instead.

"I think you do want somebody," Scott says, scooting closer on the table until they're shoulder to shoulder, thigh to thigh. It would be easy for Derek to turn his head and rest on Scott's broadening shoulder, to inhale the intoxicating perfume that is Scott-and-Derek on Scott's skin. It will fade soon; it already is. 

"I think you want something real, a person, a relationship."

Derek chuffs and rolls his eyes.

Scott bumps Derek with his arm, fingers clasping their hand together more tightly. "More than that…I think you deserve that."

Derek's head jerks up and Scott smiles. It's weird; warm and familiar and comfortable but also stripping Derek naked, letting him know that he's seen, really _seen_. 

"Everybody deserves to be loved. Even you, asshole."

Derek growls, but it's a puppy growl, no menace in it, barely even a promise. 

"I want to love you," Scott says, just like that, the blunt matter-of-factness that never fails to leave Derek flat-footed. "I want to…I think I could, if….if. But I can't right now, not while I'm still in love with someone else. And you…you'd wait for me. You'd let us go on like this forever and not care that it's not enough or that you deserve better." Scott looks faintly angry again, hot pepper and hotter eyes. "That's not fair. In fact…it's just shitty."

Scott bites his lip and just that easy, he's sixteen again, a kid, albeit one working harder than most to be not just grown-up, but a man. "I try really hard not to be shitty," he says. "I'm not always good at it, but…"

Derek leans in, kisses him. 

It's not…he's not trying to change Scott's mind. Scott has all the definitiveness that Derek lacks; if he's made his decision, there's nothing Derek can say or do to change it. And what the hell can Derek offer as a counter-argument, anyway? In another month, he might be dead at the Alpha Pack's hands. Better to do it this way, for Scott to think this is his choice. 

But if this is all he's going to have, he wants everything he _can_ have. 

Scott's mouth opens under his, soft sigh of breath, and then he pours into Derek.

"You know this isn't 'the end', the end," Scott says, his thumbs stroking on either side of Derek's jaw as they come apart, "right? There's still dinner at my mom's…."

Derek shakes his head and draws back, far enough that his every breath doesn't taste of Scott. "Invite Isaac," he says, and if his voice is a little rough, he's got every reason for it. "I think he's kind of lonely, just here with me."

And Isaac will need someone—a pack, someone to look after him—if _(when)_ Derek goes down. Scott will do that. Scott will be good for Isaac.

"But I think I shouldn't come by for a while," Derek continues. "I have things to do. Get my life together."

Scott nods and, thankfully, doesn't push any further though his face says he wants to. "Okay." He hops off the table and Derek lets himself look because he'll see Scott again, but it's the last time he'll see him like this, the last time they'll ever be this version of themselves. They next time they see each other, they'll already be well on their way into their new selves, the ones that never did this, had this. 

A few years ago, Derek read some book about parallel universes. He didn't get it all, and the book itself seemed a little unclear about whether it did or did not support the idea, but sometimes—not often—he likes to think about all those other Dereks, the lives they must be living. He likes to imagine that for every shitty thing that happens to him, there's another Derek who got to go the other way. 

"Okay," Scott says again, uncertainly, like he doesn't know what to say now that it's all said and done. "I guess I'll catch you later, man."

"Yeah," Derek says lightly. "It's been fun."

☽ ☾ 

Scott's resolve lasts all of two days; they fuck on the night of the full moon.

It's not what Scott intends to happen, obviously. His plan is to spend the night of the full moon alone—by choice, because when they find out he isn't going out with Isaac and Derek, Stiles offers to stay with him, his mom even volunteers to take off work. 

Scott thinks he's got it under control. Scott thinks: _I'm fine. I can do this._

The truth is: in the end, it's not the wolf inside him or the siren pull of the moon that Scott can't resist. 

It's the loneliness. 

For all his years as a social reject, Scott's never felt that lonely. How could he, when he's always had Stiles? But, and though he still has Stiles, it gnaws at him now, an emptiness without bottom that drives him up to his roof, that vomits from his gut and his chest and his mouth, a wolf's howl, for everything he's lost, everything he's still missing.

…and from the direction of the Preserve, Derek's call answers back.

Scott doesn't think all of the chains in Stiles' backpack could keep him out of the woods. He goes—runs—and finds Derek waiting for him, teeth bared in something that could be a grin or could be a challenge. 

What happens could be like any of the knock-down drag-out fights that they've had before, snarling, brawling…right up until the end. They fuck—rut—like that, shifted, and then start over again before either of them can even get fully soft.

They fuck again, in the brightening swell of dawn, when the animal has run out and it's just them again. 

"Don't get yourself all twisted up," Derek says afterward, shrugging back into his clothes. "It's just sex."

Scott wants to, but he doesn't argue. Because this is the phase that they've moved into now: lies to their selves and each other. 

He _is_ twisted up, though. Not because it happened; it was a mistake, but not one he can bring himself to regret. He can't regret getting to be with Derek one last time. 

It's selfish, though. 

He says he wants Derek to be happy—and he does—but he knew Derek would still have sex with him and he _used_ that knowledge. It's not the act of the guy Scott likes to think of himself as, the guy he tries to be. That it may be the action of the guy he _is (like father, like son)_ is horrifying in a way he hasn't felt since Peter tried to force him to murder all his friends. 

_Remember the part where you said you were going to be 'better', Scott?_

"I need you to help me stay away from Derek," Scott says, going to Stiles, because where else is he going to go? "Not…forever," he adds, ignoring the lurch of his heart. "Just…until my head's straight again."

Stiles looks like he's going to spit blood from chewing on his tongue, but Scott must look as bad as he feels, because Stiles takes the cell Scott holds out him and doesn't say anything other than a reflexive, "Oh, when has your head ever been straight?" which actually breaks through enough for Scott to smile.

Summer school is out, so Scott doesn't even have that to distract him. He glues himself to Stiles' side, practically living at the Stillinski's, playing video games and watching movies until he's too exhausted to think, let alone go anywhere. When Stiles' dad kicks them out, saying they'll turn into mushrooms if they don't get some sunlight, they round up Isaac and go play lacrosse or basketball. 

Sometimes it's okay. Mostly it's not.

They don't go back to the big Cineplex by mutual agreement, but they haunt the dollar theater, not especially picky about what they watch. 

Scott works his way through the school's recommended summer reading list. He works out. He works at Deaton's. He rides his new dirt bike, though never past the Argent's old house or downtown. He hangs out. 

It's normal, it's all very normal, as July fades meltingly into August.

It's all so normal, that Scott almost forgets to feel anything, when he and his mom run into Isaac and Derek at the Costco again. 

"It's been a long time!" Scott's mom says, and Derek _smiles_ , honest to God smiles and Scott can't tell if it's anything but genuine. 

"A little while," Derek agrees. "You know how it is."

"What happened?" Scott's mom asks, once they've finished up and are loading everything into the car. "That guy he was dating…did it get serious or something? Is that why he just disappeared?"

"I don't know," Scott says. "I'm not the authority on all things Derek Hale!"

"Ouch," Scott's mom says without heat. "Testy."

_Just make it through the summer,_ Scott thinks to himself, as he thinks a dozen times a day, a hundred, a thousand. _Just get through the rest of the summer._ He rubs his arm, where he's promised himself that the tattoo will go. One for Allison, one for Derek. 

It's a week later and Scott's sitting on the sideline bench watching Stiles try to get shots past Isaac's werewolf reflexes when Derek steps over and sits down next to him, bumping Scott's shoulder. 

"Hey," Derek says, calm and entirely casual, and Scott realizes, this is how it's going to be from now on. 

"Hey," Scott says, nudging back.

Derek's not the pining type. There won't be any longing looks. He's not going to make backhand references to it. He's not going to bring it up at all. They can go on from here—will go on—but not like they were.

It'll be like it never happened. 

"So…what's your mom doing for dinner this week?"

Almost.


End file.
